I was standing in line at the checkout of our local grocery store, clutching my worn-out tote bag to my chest like a shield. Outside the frosted windows, a blizzard was sweeping through the streets, turning the world into a chaotic blur of white and gray. December had turned out to be especially cruel this year.
Fifty-eight is the age when you stop running around supermarkets looking for the best sales and start going to the familiar place near your house where the clerks know you by name, where the routine offers a small, comforting illusion of stability.
Ahead of me, right at the register, a hunched-over elderly woman in a faded, moth-eaten shawl was fumbling around. She poured loose change onto the counter from a tattered leather wallet, counting the coins with trembling, arthritic fingers. On the belt lay the most modest of purchases: a loaf of bread, a carton of milk, three potatoes, and a small onion.
“Ma’am, you are short,” the cashier, a young woman named Candace with tired eyes, said wearily. “You are short about a dollar.”
“How can that be, baby?” the old woman muttered in confusion, sorting through the coins again, her hands shaking. “I counted at home. I counted everything.”
Behind me, someone sighed in annoyance. The line was growing, and people were in a hurry to get home out of the bad weather. I looked at the shrunken figure of the old woman, at her hands red from the cold, at her cheap groceries, and something tugged violently inside me. How many times had I walked past someone else’s grief, pretending not to notice? How many times had I turned away so as not to see someone else’s need?
