I couldn’t tell you the exact day or week or month when I realized that it had happened, but suddenly I noticed my husband coming grocery shopping with me and enjoying it.

            Where was he during the years of torture, the years when a trip to the grocery store with our two sons often left me in tears. Getting the babies dressed, diapers changed or potty taken care of (because heaven knows where the washrooms are in a grocery store), everyone strapped into their car seats and then into the grocery cart, left me exhausted. Fights over who should sit in the cart’s child seat and why a four-year old really shouldn’t stand in the cart nearly turned me into a madwoman.

            You discover that you have left your shopping list at home, likely on top of the toilet tank, and you are dealing with two toddlers fighting, grabbing things off shelves, throwing things out of the cart and demanding treats. You know that the books on child rearing forbid giving in and that you should just walk out of the store. At that moment, you imagine how peaceful it would be if some social services matron would walk up to you and take away your obviously abused children. But, you give in. Despite looks from sympathetic (or judgemental?) customers, you grab a pack of Oreos from the shelf, making excuses for the half-empty bag as you go through checkout.

            As the boys grow older, fights over who can push the cart escalate rapidly into a game of tag. You find yourself wandering up and down aisles, carrying an armful of groceries, searching for your cart, which by now has been involved in a hit-and-run with a pyramid of pop cans. You worry that maybe this time when you screamed at them to leave you alone and go away, they really had, and you begin to fear that the five-year old has taken his four-year old brother out into the MALL, and they are now horribly lost, or at the very least on their way to an orphanage straight out of Oliver Twist.

            Always rushing. Squeezing a quiet shop between getting off work and picking the kids up at daycare, but getting stuck in line behind the senior who is confusing his debit card with his Sears card, or insists on paying with all small change. Now you are late at daycare and have to put up with looks that say, “You must be the worst mother in the world because you forgot your kids,” plus threats that your boys will be expelled if this ever happens again. When you get home you find that you have forgotten a key ingredient for that evening’s dinner and your husband’s deodorant that he has been out of for a week.

            I couldn’t tell you exactly the day or week or month when I realized it had happened, but suddenly my teenaged sons no longer liked coming shopping with me. They’d yell out their wish lists from the family room or even go to the trouble of writing their special needs down for me. I was finally going solo, and loving it.

            I could now shop without a list. In fact, I could make up menu plans while walking through the aisles, sipping on a latté. I could stop to help older (or shorter) people reach items on high shelves or just stop to chat. I should have known this was too good to be true, and that this small window of freedom would soon slam shut.

            It started with Jordan clipping coupons for grocery store savings. Then, he started giving me coupons for bonus Air Miles, and would grill me when I got home to make sure I had used them. He began to ask why I always seemed to dress up (i.e. wore clothes without food spilled down the front), and put lipstick on “just to go to the grocery store.” Did he suspect that I was having a fling with the produce manager? Finally, he asked why I always bought the wrong pickles and I said something stupid like: “If you think you could do better, why don’t you do the shopping?” What was meant to be a rhetorical question turned out to be a huge mistake.

            Let the games begin. We have to be finished in record time, always topping our personal best. We must compare prices and always buy what will give us more Air Miles. He questions why our grocery store seems to be laid out so that all of the smushables are on the outside aisles and cans in the middle. He is trying to devise a better, more logical route through the store, attempting to change a pattern that I have perfected with over 20 years of experience. At the checkout, he constantly amazes me with things he says to the clerks about over-priced organic produce. And I still find myself wandering around the store with an armful of groceries, looking for my cart because he has to be the driver and I am “dawdling.” One of these days, when the loud speaker announces, “Clean-up on aisle five,” it won’t be just for a jar of mayonnaise.

            I’ve gotten to the point where I find myself sneaking to the grocery store like some addict. I suppose that all of the women reading this will think that I am just terrible, but obviously you are allowed to shop alone. I wonder: Is this what retirement is going to be like?