Clouds speckled the sky as they moved across the soft blue terrain. The wind whipped leaves around us as we left the little alley our double was on and headed onto Clifton. I held onto Libby as we bumped around the red wagon. I clutched my little, brown paper cookbook from Oak Meadows. After begging my mom all day she finally agreed to take me to Nature’s Bin to buy ingredients for baked apples. It was a recipe from my newly received cookbook.
Somewhere in my head I was pretending to be Laurel Ingalls Wilder. Probably due to my obsession with history that I held so strongly at the time. Baked apples, stuffed with nuts and spices, seemed like a Little House on The Prairie food to me.
The sidewalk was rough. Roots from the big oak trees stretched beneath the concrete and cracked the grey squares. Mommy pulled us uphill and we crossed the street at the school. She didn’t like that school for some reason. That’s why I went to a private, mildly Christian school. The gas station passed behind us as we pulled up onto the black turf of the old parking lot. The grocery store stood in front of us. The sign read “Nature’s Bin” and was illustrated with all kinds of fruits and vegetable that could be found inside. Bins of pumpkins sat outside the automatic doors as it was early October. Some pumpkins were too large to be placed in a bin; I always wanted Mommy to buy those for Daddy to carve.
The inside of the Bin was even colder than the fifty degrees of our city streets. I was overcome with the excitement of buying groceries for my recipe. Buying food was something Mommy did and therefore had much appeal to me.
“We only have to buy apples and walnuts, I have everything else at home.” She told me. I had exited the wagon and was observing the pyramid of apples. That was a little disappointing since my shopping bag wouldn’t be as full as her’s usually is.
“How many do you need?”
This is why she told me to bring my book, so I wouldn’t forget. Flipping open to the marked page, “Four apples.”
She put four apples into the clear bag. Next up: walnuts. One cup of walnuts. Only mom said we’d get a little less because they were expensive. I clutch the two bags in my small hands and we proceed through the deli, frozen section, essential oils, and finally on to the register. I reached up to hand my food to the woman behind the counter. Her long, blonde dreads swung down as she grabbed them. She tucked them behind her gauged ears and typed in the produce codes. She came around the counter and handed me a small, brown bag. Loading myself back into the red wagon, I double checked that having less walnuts was okay. Mommy assured me it was.
We headed back towards the warm, top level of our Clifton Avenue double. Braving the cold, as we always did, to travel our city streets.
