Sharing Mom and Grocery Shopping

Ah, the grocery store. Affectionately known as Big Y. We all wanted in on those shopping trips with Mom.

It'd be a fierce verbal battle over who's turn it was to accompany Mom to the store and help her push the cart and fill it with the week's groceries:

2 gallons of milk
2 cartons of Jumbo eggs
Only 2 varieties of snacks: fig newtons, pretzels, fig biscuits, those Italian cookies that were only good if you ate the chocolate ones
1 special dinner item such as stuffed crust pizza, chicken nuggets or (if Mom went shopping unguided by us kids) the dreaded fishsticks
2 boxes of chicken burritos, my personal favorite
1 box of bean burritos, dad's favorite and no one else's
12 pack of toilet paper for all 3 bathrooms
12 pack of paper towels for all 12 kids' messes
3 family packs of Chicken, including breasts, wings and thighs... but mostly thighs. Mom liked to bread those for dinner
1 big block of cheese
1 large bag of potatoes
3-4 selections of cold cuts
1 large jar of Jiffy peanut butter
1 jar of strawberry jelly
1 24-pack of Popsicles
3 bags frozen vegetables, usually broccoli or peas or mixed 

Usually always the same. Sometimes it wavered in one direction or another. Some weeks called for more milk. Others for more dinners.  Mom could't be trusted to shop alone, we all knew that as youngsters. She needed our attentive eyes and watering mouths to help her make her decisions. Besides, we loved playing "avoid-the-red-lava-squares" up and down the aisles. And we all had grabby hands.

She also never brought along more than 2 of us. If she did, we were doomed to waiting patiently in the 12 passenger van, aching to know what she was placing in the cart. Once she was spotted exiting the mysterious 4 walls of the supermarket, we would rush out the van and offer our help with the bags, poking our eyes and noses in each one in inspection.

The summertime called for fresh veggies from Dad's garden rather than the frozen selection in Big Y's deep ice boxes. But, that also meant picking the green beans by hand. 7 of us would line the large patch of earth, our tiny bottoms atop an overturned bucket, snapping away the crisp vegetables-- eating half as many as we tossed in the bags alongside us. It was a hot, pleasant summertime activity. We would laugh and fight, but stayed under control when dad entered the premises of the garden. Dad always commanded attention.

And once the fight for shopping with mom was won, you knew you couldn't win the fight for sitting next to mom at dinner.  Always sacraficing one grand event for another.

Sharing mom was the constant battle.