{"id":1947,"date":"2011-04-02T13:18:15","date_gmt":"2011-04-02T17:18:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/?p=1947"},"modified":"2011-04-02T13:18:15","modified_gmt":"2011-04-02T17:18:15","slug":"grocery-shopping-as-a-rite-of-passage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/2011\/04\/grocery-shopping-as-a-rite-of-passage\/","title":{"rendered":"Grocery shopping as a rite of passage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oh, Stop&Shop.\u00a0 I have come to you for food for 23 years.\u00a0 I have complained about your sometimes bruised fruit, your empty shelves, your lack of Atkins bars.\u00a0 I have loved you for your workers with disabilities, the guy who chats a bit too much about the Red Sox and food; the young man I recognize from one of Nat’s social groups; the man who covers his ears while he packs.\u00a0 The summer job kids from Brookline High School; the woman from Town Hall who has a job here, too, on the register.<\/p>\n

We can walk to Stop&Shop.\u00a0 We did that many times with our boys when they were younger.\u00a0 Stop&Shop back then was a dreaded destination.\u00a0 The worst time was when Nat had some kind of terrible outburst outside, when we were done.\u00a0 Back then he had few communication skills and so did we, so we did not always understand what was wrong for him.\u00a0 My blood pressure shot way up, as always, and I switched into Please God Make It Stop mode, along with Ned, who had the bulk of the physical struggle.\u00a0 I remember watching Ned wrestle Nat to the curb.\u00a0 I remember wondering if violence was now going to be a part of our lives.\u00a0 I remember talking to my therapist afterwards, to see if she thought we had handled it alright.\u00a0 I felt like I was in trouble, that some agency was going to rule us unfit parents and take Natty away.\u00a0 As difficult has things have been, I always always wanted to hang onto him.\u00a0 He is my responsibility, and that is that.<\/p>\n

Today I took Nat to the Stop&Shop, the only feelings I had were the dread of crowds and anticipating the boredom of food-shopping.\u00a0 Nat was clearly into the outing.\u00a0 I was feeling strong.\u00a0 When I’m strong I remember to let him do things, I take more risks.\u00a0 So I hung back to see how much he would do.<\/p>\n

He tried to get the cart out but they were all stuck together.\u00a0 He tried to pull it twice, both times taking another cart with it.\u00a0 He let it go and looked at me.\u00a0 “Here’s what you do, Nat,” I said.\u00a0 “You push this one and pull on this one.”\u00a0 He was already walking into the store with the cart I had untangled, but okay, I was with the program.\u00a0 He was pushing the cart today.<\/p>\n

We wended our way through Boca burgers, mayo, and lo-and-behold:\u00a0 Atkins bars.\u00a0 I told him to find the sugar, once we were in the baking aisle.\u00a0 He went ahead, looking but not with focus.\u00a0 “Look on the lower shelves, Nat.\u00a0 The sugar is usually down there.”\u00a0 It was always<\/em> down there, yellow bags bright as sunlight but I didn’t want to embarrass him for not being able to find it.\u00a0 “Look down, Nat.”\u00a0 He looked down, and picked up confectioners’ sugar.\u00a0 “No, not that bag.\u00a0 A yellow bag.”\u00a0 He touched the right bag but did not pick it up.\u00a0 I did and showed him the word.\u00a0 “Nat, read this.”<\/p>\n

“Sugar.”<\/p>\n

“Good, Darling.”\u00a0 And then we finished up.\u00a0 I only had a few items so I thought I’d do Self-Check-Out.\u00a0 I started scanning and then I remembered that Nat has been training at a mock shelving room in his school, to scan bar codes and shelve items.\u00a0 I wondered… “Nat, why don’t you help me scan these.\u00a0 You know about bar codes. You look for this.” I showed him the black lines.\u00a0 He started picking up boxes but moving them haphazardly across the eye.\u00a0 A little more guidance, okay.\u00a0 “Here,” I said, orienting the box correctly.\u00a0 I handed boxes to him in the right orientation and then I saw that he was getting it.\u00a0 He was holding them correctly and placing them in just the right place for the beep, then putting them on the conveyor belt.\u00a0 This was generalization of a skill, right before my eyes.<\/p>\n

When it was done, while I was paying, I tried another thing, why not?\u00a0 “Nat, will you bag?”\u00a0 I didn’t wait for his answer because I had to press buttons.\u00a0 Then I looked up, and he was holding a bag and putting stuff into it.\u00a0 He’d already finished one bag, and it was in the cart.<\/p>\n

My blood pressure was up, I was running quickly after him as he pushed the full cart out the door.\u00a0 He stopped at the curb to let a car go by.\u00a0 He had looked for cars.\u00a0 Another blessing.\u00a0 He loaded the stuff into the car.\u00a0 He got into the back seat, because that is where he likes to ride.\u00a0 He carried all but one bag into the house.<\/p>\n

A trip to the Stop&Shop on a Saturday has made my day.\u00a0 How many people with typically-developing children can say that?\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oh, Stop&Shop.\u00a0 I have come to you for food for 23 years.\u00a0 I have complained about your sometimes bruised fruit, your empty shelves, your lack of Atkins bars.\u00a0 I have loved you for your workers with disabilities, the guy who chats a bit too much about the Red Sox and food; the young man I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-vp","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1947"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1949,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1947\/revisions\/1949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}