When my wife Sharon and I make our trip to the grocery store each week, we fall automatically into a rhythm developed through years of shared experience. Sharon carries the coupons and keeps track of which staple products (sugar, laundry detergent) we need to replenish. I grab a cart outside the store and do most of the pushing. When an aisle has products we both use, or items too heavy or numerous for Sharon to manage without the cart, we walk together. Otherwise we might be an aisle or two apart, Sharon looking at chicken for dinners while I’m picking up frozen entrees for work-week lunches. In the checkout line we unload the groceries onto the conveyor belt, me from the front of the cart and Sharon from the back. I swipe my credit card and sign for the groceries; Sharon gets the receipt and the coupons spit out by the cash register.
It wasn’t always this easy and automatic. For one thing, especially after we moved to the East Coast in 2003, it took a while to figure out which brands and products we liked. More crucially, our ability to work in harmony has been honed through many trials and many errors: Sharon wandering through the store, arms full of cleaning products, trying to figure out where I went with the cart; both of us picking up bread but neither of us milk. Sometimes we got impatient with each other, but we learned.
I’ve always been wary of routines because it’s easy for them to turn into ruts. When I hear elders described as being “set in their ways,” I think to myself, “Not me. Not ever.” But as I look back on the turbulent years when more of my world was in flux, I feel relief and gratitude at having eliminated some variables. I’ve found my calling, my mate and my home. Now that Sharon and I have mastered even grocery shopping together, we can focus more eagerly and confidently on life’s other joys and challenges. OK, what’s next?
(Note: When I read this to Sharon, she said, “And it’s only taken us nine years.”)
