Emotions haunt spaces.

I knew that. Intimately, because I’ve been living in a fraught house for so long.

So I’m not sure why I didn’t pick up earlier that I’ve been avoiding my blog because of the reverberations of my last post.

Therefore.

Let’s clear the air with a happier clarifying: why I love going shopping with those I love.

I was going to say “Ikea and farmer’s markets like SoWa in Boston where there’s everything from jewelry to honey to hot sauce and all that is grown and raised locally”, but really, even hardware stores like Home Depot, garden stores, corner bodegas, and your most prosaic grocery store is a joy to wander through.

Because it’s communion and companionship.

Every “oh look” and “what about this” is an invitation to share a piece of yourself, to learn something new about the other person.

It’s not only creation of shared memories and small rituals, like chocolate snails and berries and cream cake at the Davis Square farmer’s market every Thursday, but it’s also hopes for the future, immediate or otherwise.

Chicken or beef for dinner? Cilantro or basil? Pickled red radish or daikon?

At stores like Ikea, it’s a waking dream filled with hopes of building a life together, mug by picture frame by storage solutions.

This set of bowls rather than that one. Your favorite shade of green for these curtains. My preferred type of couch style.

At the garden store, it’s hope and promise all at once. Raising food and beauty together, sharing in the harvest when it comes time…

And as someone who is both short in the pocketbook and disabled, now it’s also one of the only ways I can go on an low-stakes adventure with someone I love.

I love to travel and seeing new things, trying local foods, experiencing the lives of people who live a different life… but disability makes it hard to imagine a future where that’s an easy option.

Going to the grocery store together, however, that I can do.

That I must find the spoons to do, in fact.

So there, there is where I can and must nourish my need for shared escapades.

Have you ever tried “Viking smoked sea salt”? Or banana bread made with rye flour rather than wheat? Pecans with your brownies, are they worth the extra expenditure?
(I find that if you’re chopping up pecans and folding them into cake, you might as well use walnuts, but pecans so amazing if you just layer some on top of your banana bread because then their buttery nuttiness really shines)

Oh, frozen lobster is on sale now. Even though I can’t rustle up either the money for airfare back to visit Boston or the spoons to fly halfway across the globe in economy… we can try making our own version of a Maine lobster roll.

None of the recipes for making clotted cream at home have yielded results that I love, and the jarred stuff is really sad-making, but there’s still something blissful about experimenting together.

Costco is fun because you get samples sometimes, which is how I found that I actually prefer the 12 year mixed blend Kirkland has over the “higher class” Japanese distillery. And not to sound like a complete lush, but there’s something lovely about wandering the aisles ever so slightly tipsy.

Cynicism is further away then, and I can fully appreciate how there’s ricotta to be had in Taiwan now and I no longer need to make my own.

I can wonder over the blessing that is 60 NTD mushroom pizza that isn’t quite as good as Trader Joe’s Gruyere mushroom flatbread, but a decent compensation for not getting to have that.

Life is better when shared with someone you love and when you can see a future together.

And what could be more immediate and intimate than “what sounds good for dinner today?” and “how do you think this would look in our home?”.

One of the things I miss most about living in Boston is wandering the various markets, one every single day of the week, with my best beloved, dreaming of a future together, and then making that adventure come true, together.