Supermarket Syndrome

Now no one but the baby, who still thinks mothers are made in heaven, would consider me a perfect housekeeper. But there are certain things on which I pride myself. I can untangle kites from telephone wires, and I’m the only mother on the block who can skip Double Dutch. What I can’t seem to do, is keep enough food in the house to feed my family.

I buy food the way Ibn Saud takes wives—extravagantly, and in great bulk. But within twenty-four hours my pantry shelves are completely empty. Actually, the shelves aren’t exactly empty. What they are, is filled with empty jars, boxes and cartons; so that after I check the cupboards, I come home from the grocer’s with a single tin of sardines, when what I really need is the kind of food order I’d buy if I were setting up house-keeping with a dozen healthy truck drivers.

I don’t know where the food goes. My family certainly doesn’t eat it. My husband decided long ago that if we were to remain married at least until the children were grown and able to fend for themselves, he’d better never eat breakfast or lunch at home.

And the children never eat anything. They make castles out of their mashed potatoes and drop their peas down the baby’s neck. Everything else goes out on the back porch for the squirrels, which makes hanging out the wash pretty hazardous. It’s also pointless, because even the squirrels are smart enough to prefer my dahlia bulbs.

I know this sounds as though I’m disorganized and never try to make out grocery lists, but that’s not true. The trouble is that, assuming I can find a pencil, I can never locate any paper to write on, unless you count the backs of traffic summonses or the cuffs of my husband’s dirty shirts. The real test comes when I have to write a note to my child’s teacher, and all I can find in the way of writing materials are an overdue meat bill and a half-used tube of Pink Passion lipstick.

The really harrowing part of it is that even if I make lists, I can’t read them. One night, in a mad burst of organizational frenzy, I wrote down everything I needed to get the next day and stuck it with smug satisfaction to the refrigerator door. The next morning I leaped out of bed, anxiously anticipating a day of fruitful accomplishment.

It took me only an hour to figure out that ‘lrg mln nt 2 rp’ meant ‘large melon not too ripe’, but I defy anyone but the discoverer of the Rosetta stone to decipher ‘rtn lggs fr lgr pr n grn’.

And the cost of grocery shopping today! I’d noticed the rising supermarket prices, but I put it down to all the pantyhose and CDs I was buying. I never dreamed that food prices were going up too. Experts keep telling me to comparison shop, which leaves me with two choices: I can pay a sitter a king's ransom and drive to the other end of town to save a penny on a can of string beans; or drag four protesting children along, in which case the money I save won’t begin to pay for the tranquilizers I’ll need when I get home.

I guess I’m just not prepared, either mentally or physically, to make a career of food shopping. There are so many other matters that require my urgent attention—like who put all that sand in the kitchen cupboard? And more important, why? (I hope they’re collecting it for the sandbox and not, dear Lord, not another ant farm).

I once watched a woman in the butcher shop, pencil and notebook in hand, checking off the huge order of meat being packaged for her. Now, I begrudge no woman her attractive appearance. We’re all fashion models at heart. What I resent is watching a woman in a Chanel suit, every hair in place, sitting contemplating her meat order as though she were consulting the wine list at Maxim’s.

She told me that by making one big order this way, her family’s meals were completely planned for the next six months. This is an unnerving thought for someone like me, who considers a meal well planned if she remembers to run in for a pound of ground round while she’s doing the afternoon car pool.

Anyway, there’s something depressing about knowing exactly what you’re going to eat for dinner for the next 180 nights. I think I’ll just keep on doing what I’ve always done. Every day at five p.m., I’m going to look into the refrigerator and wonder hysterically what kind of meal I can possibly prepare with a jar of apricot yogurt, two uncapped bottles of soda water and a half-eaten toffee apple.