The Shopper
May 15, 2000
5:58 a.m.
On Saturday Brigid and I went on a lunch date. Okay, it was really a thinly disguised outing to buy Mother's Day presents built around a trip to McDonalds. Columbus is a town with almost no unemployment, and where even the fast food restaurants can't find enough people to make their business work. This means we waited in line for our food. When we finally got it, I carted the tray to a quiet table where Brigid unloaded everything and sorted out whose food was whose. She gave me the tray. We ate, her munching a plain cheeseburger, me my Quarter pounder with cheese. She took joy in the fact that her bun didn't have sesame seeds, something that she would prefer not to have and something that I hadn't known about her. Suddenly, it seemed sad that I hadn't known my own daughter is not a sesame seed person, and I was quite pleased to have found out. How many more of these things are there to learn about her, I wondered. A silent void seemed to surround her right then. I've lived with her for her entire life, and I'm just now learning that she's not a sesame seed person. What other vitally important bits of trivia am I missing? Is it possible to know everything about someone, even if you live with them? "How are things going at school?" I asked. "Okay." Shrug of the shoulders. "We've been learning about how to make elements happy." She looks at me with an expectant gaze, and it's obvious that my perplexed look satisfies her. "We've been learning that elements have electrons ordered in shells, and that they need eight in their outer shell in order to be happy." "I see," I said. "Except for hydrogen and helium. They only need two, and helium is already happy." It goes on like this, her telling me about how atoms combine, me explaining how some of the language ("bi-", di-", "-ide") came about. Chemists are strange (says the Mechanical Engineer masquerading as a software person). She tells me about the chemical composition of salt, and she rattles off atomic weights and masses and various calculations. In a short while, we're done. I take the tray to the trash, and we leave. A few minutes later, we're at the mall. Brigid was cold in the air-conditioned hallway, and she huddled close by. I put my arm around her to keep her warm. She led me to Bath and Body Works, which I think is her mother's favorite store. Once there, she shrugged off my shoulder and went to work. She scanned items, and talked to the women who worked there. "Is this moisturized?" she asked one woman. "What is shower crème?" she inquired of another. She told me her favorite scent. "Here, hold this, please." She put a raspberry scented container into my hand and went on. I watched her, and suddenly she seemed like ... well. I don't know. How can I say this right. She just seemed like ... well. She was a person, you know? My eleven-year-old daughter was a grown up person, interacting with the rest of the world on her own terms. She was in charge. Figuring things out. Smelling soaps, sometimes merely for the fun of knowing what something smelled like, sometimes because she wanted to consider whether she thought her mother would like it. When we were through there, Brigid tried to get me to carry her bag. "You obviously don't understand this relationship," I said. She looked at me funny. "You're the shopper." I pointed my index finger at her shoulder. "I'm the payer." I pointed it into my chest. This seemed to satisfy her for a little while anyway. We did the card shop, and several clothing stores, and finally took a jaunt to Afterthoughts, where she picked out several pairs of ear rings. I helped by making sure they were marked for sensitive ears--and, of course, by paying. Somehow I found myself carrying the bags while she was in the stores. She had to have her hands free to pick things out, you know? The mall's hallway was cold still, and on the way out of the mall Brigid huddled close by again. The car was warm after having been left in the sun. The drive home was only ten minutes. We wrapped the presents and signed the cards. Then she went to play her Gameboy. Pokemon, I believe it was.  But, I like sesame seeds ... Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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