Juvenescence

Nowadays wherever I go — to shop, to eat, or just hang out — there’s so much choice; shelves and shelves of food and racks and racks of clothing. A diversity that dizzies me out of my normal decisiveness, and prices that give me pause even though I can pay them now. And everything looks so polished and immaculate as well — a lot of bright white and sleek countertops. It’s a far cry from the thrift shops I perused in my youth, weathered as much as their merchandise and cramped between Latin-American restaurants.

At least one time a week my grandmother would take me shopping in them. We wouldn’t always buy something, but she always spent hours browsing, and when she would find something she fancied, like a pot in good condition or a barely used coat, she often haggled with the shopkeepers, trying to reduce the already low price. Half the time they’d give in after a while — probably just to get her to leave — and my grandmother would give me a lecture on how to find the best deal, how to make things last. I don’t remember any of those lectures because my brain would be fried after listening to her talk with another customer about something utterly arcane without end.

After the thrift shops, she’d say we needed to go to one of the markets — one of the small grocery stores selling food from the country the owner immigrated from. I always whined and protested because that’s what tired children do, but she’d just wag her finger and ignore my griping. We’d spend the better part of an hour browsing through foods with names I couldn’t pronounce, and sometimes my grandmother would talk with the shopkeeper if she spoke their language: Russian, Swahili, Vietnamese, Arabic, Farsi. Despite my objections, I liked going into those stores. Their loud stuttering air conditioners provided intense, if uneven, relief from the scorching heat, and they always smelled of spices. And if I behaved my grandmother would buy me a little snack, which is why samosas are my favorite food to this day.

Sometimes she’d declare that we needed to eat instead of shop, so we’d go to one of those Latin-American restaurants. There were lots of menus I couldn’t read. My grandmother spoke Spanish as well, and would order in it fluently, and I’d just say, “I’ll have what she’s having,” which was usually carnitas, or something that sounded similar, with a glass of water. My grandmother would hum along with the music playing. And maybe strike up a conversation with another patron, in Spanish, and tell me about all the southward trips she took in her youth — about places like Acapulco, Costa Rica, and Montevideo — which I couldn’t place on a map. And she’d lament how some of those places are worse off today than when she went there, invariably transitioning into a rant about how horribly our country treats immigrants and how borders are meaningless.

Nowadays when I go shopping for a pot or a new pair of jeans it’s at an upscale brand name store in a newly gentrified area, where the cheapest pair of pants is fifty dollars on sale, but they end up lasting longer than anything I got from a thrift shop, even though they tear just as easily. Where they have pictures of models wearing the clothes, looking at you implicitly saying “Yes, you could look like this too.” They stand in place of the old thrift shops because most of the thrift shops had to close down, the properties all bought up by venture capitalists, and the ones that are left are too out of the way. And when I go out to eat with friends it’s at an upscale restaurant in those same gentrified areas, where “foreign food” is from the part of Europe that wasn’t behind the Iron Curtain.

The kinds that describe everything with words like artisanal, with waiters that dress in all black, long lists of alcoholic drinks, and require a reservation. The ones that are always busy at night, raucous with commotion. They’re very lively, but at the same time they don’t feel that way; everything has an aura of newness and polish that verges into being sterile. I still have a nice time though, and the food is damn good. And certainly, the places I hang out at now are a

hell of a lot nicer than those of my past: kicking a ball against a dilapidated fence doesn’t really compare to Central Park. That said, I will die defending my hometown’s ice creamery, which was the hangout spot for after school from fifth grade to graduation, and which blows every other ice cream out of the water, no contest.

It closed down too.

Nowadays my home is a “luxury” apartment in a renovated building in a renovated area. It’s mine and mine alone and every night it’s quiet when I open the door, which is something I always wanted because everyday when my mom picked me up from my grandmother’s house she was tired and irritable after a long work day, and would groan when my grandmother chattered at her blithely — the same way she groaned at me whenever I wanted her attention. My dad would usually call me at around the same time, asking about how I’m doing. And I’d only say I’m fine and my mom says it’s time to go. We’d get home and my stepfather would be there with dinner cooking, and he’d be watching TV, which I wanted to watch.

There wasn’t much talking in my house other than at dinner, but it was constantly noisy with their presence that silenced anyone else’s, and then they had a child and the air was noiser in many more ways. Everything became so cramped that it became my only goal to live alone. I couldn’t go to bed as early as I needed because they let my brother stay up later than I did at that age; bathing him no earlier than a quarter to ten, which was always a loud and tense affair. The kind that you can’t ignore no matter how much you want to. I had a temper as a kid, but it was my brother who made me see what anger could really be, and I vowed never to get angry again.

When my childhood ended I set out with a vision of what I wanted: the opposite of what I had, which I cast off out of hand. I have it all

now.

| Joseph Stokes