Juvenescence Nowadays wherever I go — to shop, to eat, or
I don’t remember any of those lectures because
just hang out — there’s so much choice; shelves
my brain would be fried after listening to her
and shelves of food and racks and racks of
talk with another customer about something
clothing. A diversity that dizzies me out of my
utterly arcane without end.
normal decisiveness, and prices that give me pause even though I can pay them now. And
After the thrift shops, she’d say we needed to
everything looks so polished and immaculate
go to one of the markets — one of the small
as well — a lot of bright white and sleek
grocery stores selling food from the country
countertops. It’s a far cry from the thrift shops
the owner immigrated from. I always whined
I perused in my youth, weathered as much as
and protested because that’s what tired children
their merchandise and cramped between
do, but she’d just wag her finger and ignore my
Latin-American restaurants.
griping. We’d spend the better part of an hour browsing through foods with names I couldn’t
At least one time a week my grandmother would
pronounce, and sometimes my grandmother
take me shopping in them. We wouldn’t always
would talk with the shopkeeper if she spoke
buy something, but she always spent hours
their language: Russian, Swahili, Vietnamese,
browsing, and when she would find something
Arabic, Farsi. Despite my objections, I liked
she fancied, like a pot in good condition or a
going into those stores. Their loud stuttering
barely used coat, she often haggled with the
air conditioners provided intense, if uneven,
shopkeepers, trying to reduce the already low
relief from the scorching heat, and they
price. Half the time they’d give in after a while
always smelled of spices. And if I behaved my
— probably just to get her to leave — and my
grandmother would buy me a little snack, which
grandmother would give me a lecture on how to
is why samosas are my favorite food to this day.
find the best deal, how to make things last.
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