Ini­tially, I wanted to write some­thing with pure depth and soul when I sat down to express my feel­ings, how­ever, it’s excep­tion­ally dif­fi­cult to describe what I’m feel­ing right now with­out there being a hint of con­fu­sion mixed in with remorse.

A few hours ago I found out that my mother passed away from kid­ney fail­ure, a woman who I wasn’t as close to as I would’ve liked to be. She was rel­a­tively young, only 45 years old and dwelled with­out resolve on var­i­ous deci­sions she made in her past, to the point where in the end she chose to stop living.

Despite this, I feel a sense of empti­ness because she was my mother, the woman who car­ried me in her womb for 9 months and for the first 7 years of my life did her best to look after my sib­lings and I.

Yet, it’s awk­ward right now, won­der­ing why I never reached out to her more. Aside from issues that kept us from becom­ing close, I sup­pose there’s a part of me that wishes I could’ve looked past that, instead try­ing to find some­thing to con­nect us again. I never did and in this life­time won’t have the answer to that.

For now, all I can muster up the emo­tion to say is that there was a part of me that loved my Mother uncon­di­tion­ally. Look­ing past her flaws, she had good qual­i­ties about her that I’m proud of. Six years ago, when I was afforded the oppor­tu­nity to sit down and have a painful, gritty and emo­tional dis­cus­sion with her, I respected her for open­ing her­self up to imperfection.

Mom, I hope you feel bet­ter whereever you are now. It’s hard for me to think I’ll never in this life­time have the oppor­tu­nity to talk to you again, but, I thank you for bring­ing me into this world. At one point in my life you were my hero and you could do no wrong and now I send my love to you in hopes that you are in a bet­ter place, far from any con­flict, rest­ing in peace, forever.

I love you.  

There’s just some­thing about a local, mom and pop mar­ket that evokes that “home­town” feel­ing of nos­tal­gia that you don’t get from larger super­mar­ket chains. There’s also some stark dif­fer­ences between the shop­ping expe­ri­ence, mostly involv­ing cus­tomer ser­vice and atmosphere.

It’s kind of sad that most small­town gro­cery mar­kets have gone the way of the dodo because of larger super­mar­kets dom­i­nat­ing an area. Less than 70 years ago, it was com­mon­place to do your gro­cery shop­ping at a local gro­cer and in many cases these small mar­kets would offer home delivery.

If you felt so inclined to walk into the store, you might’ve been greeted whole­somely by the owner, who behind the scenes worked hard to keep his store afloat amongst the com­pe­ti­tion. How­ever, in those days your com­pe­ti­tion wasn’t a mega-ultra-supreme-deluxe super­mar­ket with auto­matic doors, self-checkout and 24-hour ser­vice. Rather, your com­peti­tor was Joe Smith’s Gro­ceries and Pet Food just down the way a cou­ple blocks, past the Bap­tist church, across the street from McBrod­er­ick Broth­ers Pharmacy.

Instead of going to my reg­u­lar super­mar­ket, that mega-ultra-supreme-deluxe store with auto­matic doors, self-checkout and 24-hour ser­vice, I decided to pay homage to yes­ter­year and visit one of the only remain­ing small-town gro­cers in East Rochester, NY. Since we’re small enough to be con­sid­ered a vil­lage, accord­ing to the city, this mar­ket is called The Vil­lage Fair.

Ear­lier in the week I hap­pened upon an ad for The Vil­lage Fair in which they were adver­tis­ing deli meat for $1.99/lb. A steal in my book con­sid­er­ing I gen­er­ally pay about $5.00/lb. and in this house­hold we like (or, I should say I like) sand­wiches so we stock up on the fixings.

My first thought upon enter­ing the store was that it was pretty small. I guess I’m used to super­mar­kets being on aver­age the size of 3 foot­ball fields. The Vil­lage Fair is prob­a­bly only about the size of a typ­i­cal retail space, which is to say they jam­pack the mar­ket with all sorts of things.

While they have a lot of items, I wasn’t sur­prised when I noticed that many brand named items were replaced by generic food brands, sev­eral of which I never heard of in my life. No wor­ries since a box of Kel­logs cereal aver­ages about $2.99, wherein these generic cere­als cost about a dol­lar less. I then scoped out the place, keep­ing note of the aes­thet­ic­ness and over­all feel­ing of atmosphere.

I was stunned when some­one asked me how my day was going and whether on not I needed help find­ing any­thing. I can’t recall a time in my usual super­mar­ket when some­one asked if I needed help find­ing some­thing. More often than not I’d be on the witch hunt for a floater or stocker to ask them where an item was. In this case it was nice to have some­one approach me for a change, some­thing you don’t see in Best Buy, Tar­get or any of the larger chains unless you’re hav­ing a lucky day.

After load­ing my cart with the usu­als (bread, milk and cheese), I scooted to the front to check­out. The lady behind the counter smiled proudly and for once it didn’t seem forced or fake for that mat­ter. Rather, it seemed geni­une and pleas­ant and to be hon­est it threw me off guard since I’m used to lit­tle social inter­ac­tion, save for the unusual occassion.

The only dis­ad­van­tages that I could see shop­ping at local mar­kets is whether or not you trust their pric­ing schemes and the fact that they have a lim­ited selec­tion of items. For instance, I noticed that while some things were marked down in com­par­i­son to super­mar­ket prices, other items were slightly higher so as keep a balance.

Over­all, it was an expe­ri­ence that I wouldn’t mind going through again. It was kind of neat to take a step back to a time when cus­tomer ser­vice was at the fore­front of shop­ping expe­ri­ences, and that’s exactly what they were in yes­ter­year, expe­ri­ences and not just park­ing, rush­ing in and rush­ing out.