we have always lived at the supermarket

Pulling into the Trader Joe’s carpark, I’m scheming ways to make the shopping trip go smoothly. I ask Scout to go choose a red trolley for us from the corral by the door. Kids need JOBS.

I grab Japhy’s hand and walk with him toward the entrance. He leans into me and whispers a secret: “Scout is bad at choosing trolleys.”

He has a tantrum by the organic bananas because he wants to push the trolley, but it’s Scout’s turn. I start the phone timer. I forget the milk because they are still tussling when we pass the dairy case.

Sometimes if you’re lucky, you can see the hands on the far side of the fridges slip through with a slab of yoghurt, briefly crossing the void—the magic of the supermarket.

My phone alarm goes off by the Manzilla olive pouches, but the kids have dispersed.

At the checkout, S and J shake down the cashier with the secret code: “We found PJ”—the toy dog that hides around the store—and it’s a hold-up. She opens her draw to fetch lollipops and a reel of TJ stickers. “I’d like an orange one,” Japhy corrects her, handing back a yellow lollipop.

“If you are going to throw the stickers away, you can just say you want the lolly,” I tell them, packing frozen tamales atop some dusty stickers in the bottom of the fridge bag. “I don’t think we need to pretend here.”

I wheel out the trolley with five shopping bags and two children sucking lollipops stacked on. It handles very well.

*

We stop at the “one-kid aisle” store—Rite Aid, which has one aisle with some Hot Wheels and Playmobil sets—because S and J are keen to each pick a Gatorade flavor.

I went into Rite Aid one day and found that the shelves were empty. I needed six type-E lightbulbs. There were four lightbulbs left. None of them were Es.

“Are you going out of business?” I asked the checkout person.

“No, we’re coming out of bankruptcy!” she said brightly.

Japhy runs up to the “kid aisle,” which is blank now except for a couple of pegs with highlighters and markers. It’s the no-kid aisle.

There is so little merchandise left that the staff have spread around what they do have, papering over the gaps in the simulation of a shop. The checkout has no chewing gum left, so someone has laid out tape dispensers the long way, merchandized in rows, the whale tail of the cutter abutting the next face. The kind of shop a child sets up.

in the end times, there will still be Dude Wipes

Funnily enough, homes across the U.S. have a laudable inventory of backstock, having bought up the supply chain a pallet at a time so they can merchandise in their own pantries. This seems to be what we wanted all along: not-for-individual-sale for ourselves until the moon turns red.

*

Last summer, Japhy refused to come into the pharmacy, so I left the engine and air con running for him and took Scout in. Two minutes later, I was checking out when a lady ran in and shouted, “There is a child trapped in a car!”

I didn’t twig that it was my child for a moment. He’s 8 but still sits in a child car seat. “With red hair?” I asked. “That’s my kid, he’s fine.”

My sister and I spent half our childhood steaming in a yellow Renault 12 with broken window handles while our mum shopped at Coles. I was medium-annoyed about the woman’s insinuation.

“Children DIE in hot cars!” she said, and I told her the air con was on. That made her madder.

“You should be glad someone cares!” she yelled, and took off for the pharmacy window, which is always down when you try and get medicine—stock up on your scripts before the apocalypse, everyone.

A month later, I zipped into a store in a strip mall for 30 seconds, leaving Scout in the back seat. It wasn’t hot.

When I came back to the car, she was in the driver’s seat, her hoodie drooping over her face, and her chin tucked, like one of those mannequins people strap into the passenger seat to zoom around in HOV lanes.

“What are you doing??” I asked, thinking about the time All Children Were Hereafter Banned from the front seat (Scout put a bunch of coins in the CD player that broke the entire stereo system and cost $300 to fix).

She put down her hood. “I didn’t want you to get arrested.”

Mothers and Other Fictional Characters

I got my first taste of Nicole Graev Lipson’s writing in the fall 2024 Mother Tongue, in a sharp, short essay about the false need for children to “sever” the mother bond as they grow. The entire memoir is now out, and it’s a cracker. There’s an essay that looks at how a greater emphasis on friendship might have helped our mothers. Below is a taste that doesn’t nearly do the whole thing justice, but lets you peek in:

Here, for the world to know, is the barely hidden secret of us heterosexual ladies with our wedding bands and anniversary trips and date nights and glowing monogamous devotion to the men we married: wrapped tenderly and snugly around our hearts, like an invisible ring, is our love of another woman. Or two. Or more.

Get it now <3

that reminds me

I’ve stolen Noodles’ work friend to be my own, and she just sent this reel about Noodles wearing my coat to the office

is accurate

goodies

• on supermarkets: one of my fav things I ever edited: How we all became Target Mom (emilyyyyyy)

• I’ve decided LinkedIn personas are the essence of innies: [pointless line break] (also they’ve ruined emojis for us)

• “What Harry and Meghan forgot was that the great thing about being royal is you can be as boring as fuck for as long as you live and still be treated as the most important person in the room.”

• new pod from

  Claire Zulkey
  !!! Not Right Now!!!! boy we need it

• A good look at the shifting understanding of consent in Oz in this 30-year lookback at Helen Garner’s The First Stone:

  • “In these stories, two feminist women, 50 years apart in age, both identify the same interpersonal dynamic as erotic. Perceiving that in places of learning it is often someone’s relative knowledge or status that is attractive, they nevertheless have very different views on how this might be understood, let alone what ought to be done about it.”

• John Jeremiah Sullivan on how he’s gotten better as a writer: “less straining” (ty M for rec)

• probably the reel I’ve watched the most

• paid subs: I have your perk ready!! watch yer mailbox <3