I Finally Got to Go Shopping. Here’s How That Worked Out. Sheltering at Home Week 19

July 24, 2020. Sheltering at Home Week 19

I strode into my neighborhood plant nursery the other day, face mask in place, ready to do some serious shopping.

But there was nothing I wanted to buy. No iceland poppies. No dahlias. Not even a modest six-pack of pansies.

I spotted a few half-dead plants in pots. And there was a line-up of pudgy succulents. But that was about it.

Shopping Soviet-Style

It reminded me of a shopping trip I took to the GUM store in Moscow during the Cold War-Iron Curtain days. I was on a student excursion, and our Soviet minder-guide took us there on a tour.

I don’t know which was more pathetic — the few lonesome scraps of merchandise on GUM’s mostly bare shelves. Or our young guide’s pride in the stately old building’s paltry offerings.

And now, right here in my own neighborhood, in the affluent U.S. of A., we have a GUM situation. Nothing much for sale in this shady glen on the side of the road. Not because of a state-controlled, top-down economy. But because this was a close-out sale. My favorite nursery was shutting its gates. It was following a trend I’ve come to dread. It was going over to “on-line service.”

On-line shopping? No way. I am not a virtual shopper. I’m a shopper.

I like to shop when I shop. I like to put my hands on things. Turn them over. Try them on if they are clothes. Take a whiff if they’re petunias. Pick it up and feel its heft if it’s a frying pan. Plop myself down if it’s a sofa.

Shop.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, I haven’t gone shopping since — when? February? January? When was my last all-day expedition to Walnut Creek’s newly, expensively remodeled mall at Broadway Plaza? When was my last salad lunch at a Nordstrom cafe? My last stroll along Berkeley’s Solano Avenue?

Now, finally, I had my chance. I was headed for an outdoor nursery. I could shop in safety, I thought as I set out from home on the same tank of gas I’d had since April. A short drive. People wearing masks. A little breeze. And something I actually needed — plants.

I could wander around. Look at stuff. Touch some leaves and stems. Buy something.

Ron the gardener had cleared a swath of dead-brown California geraniums from our rock garden that morning. And now there was a big patch of dirt waiting for something with chlorophyll to make itself at home amidst the bower vines and Japanese anemones.

(Also the yellow jackets, a sneaky blackberry vine, and the graceful but over-sized native bracken that sidled into our front yard last winter when I wasn’t looking.)

Slippers, Yoga Blocks. And — Zinnias?

I haven’t been shopping — really shopping — in months. Jon and I stay out of the stores pretty much. I’ve bought a few things on line: slippers and moisturizers. I ordered yoga blocks once, but the vendor was out of stock and I got my money back.

Today I was ready for an honest-to-goodness, non-virtual shopping spree. Check out the available stuff. Come home holding something fresh and new and actual in my hands.

But a half-hour later, I was leaving the nursery empty-handed. And sad.

Sad because yet another beloved neighborhood merchant was closing its doors. (Our camera shop, our sporting goods store, and our hamburger place had long ago bit the dust.)

Sad because I miss my kids and my friends and I was counting on a little human non-contact.

And sad because I just plain wanted to get out of the house and see what the world had to offer. In this case, black-eyed Susans, begonias, zinnias.

I wanted to take some living, breathing things home with me. I wanted to pop them out of their containers, dig them into that bare spot in our front yard, and enjoy their company.

I wanted to shop.

Another shopping story at “Wedding Dress Shopping — When Your Daughter Lets You Tag Along.”  And here’s one about that same daughter when she was 8-years-old and I took her girdle shopping.