I regularly shopped for my mom while she was in assisted living. She didn\u2019t want to exist solely on the kosher food at the Jewish facility. (That\u2019s a common complaint of the non-Orthodox.)<\/p>\n
Occasionally my mother came with me to Heinen\u2019s. She got the motorized Dodgem cart. She wasn\u2019t a great driver. She had Parkinson\u2019s.<\/p>\n
She schmoozed<\/strong><\/span> with the clerks and checked expiration dates on cole slaw. She always taught me something; in the cereal aisle, she once told me, \u201cYou get the most weight for your money with shredded wheat.\u201d<\/p>\n She liked Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies and Pringles potato chips. She could eat anything.\u00a0I had to buy her Boost to gain weight.<\/p>\n I liked the snack aisle at Heinen\u2019s, and I liked having an excuse to go there. What kind of Milanos should I get? There were seven varieties. What kinds of Pringles? There were 15 choices. I was shopping for junk for health reasons.<\/p>\n She once wanted me to ask for \u201cJewish tongue\u201d at the deli counter, because she couldn\u2019t attract the clerk\u2019s attention; she was seated too low in her motorized cart.<\/p>\n I said,<\/strong> <\/span>\u201cJewish tongue, please!\u201d That\u2019s the only time I ever said that.<\/p>\n My mother had served tongue when we were growing up.\u00a0It was bad then, and it\u2019s bad now.<\/p>\n Toward the end, nothing tasted good to my mom. Everything was too spicy, or not spicy enough. The only thing that worked was shrimp cocktail. She had no taste buds left. That was about her only complaint in her last years. My mother wasn\u2019t a kvetch.<\/p>\n I continued going to Heinen\u2019s after she died in 2004. But I don\u2019t go into the center aisles often where the junk food is; I hang around the \u201chealthy choice\u201d perimeter.<\/p>\n My visits<\/strong> <\/span>to Heinen’s are like mini-yahrzeits for my mother. Pringles: Mom. Pepperidge Farm Milanos: Mom. Jewish tongue: Mom. That last one, I still have trouble with.<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n The above essay appeared in the New York Times<\/em> 10 years ago. I sent it to “oped@nytimes.com” with the subject line “here’s one for mother’s day.” —<\/p>\n Julia Stratton (1920 – 2004). 1953 photo. Leslie (front) and Bert.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My mother, Julia, wanted herring and a third of a pound of pastrami, sliced thin.\u00a0I went to Heinen\u2019s supermarket and got it for her, and she died the next day. I regularly shopped for my mom while she was in assisted living. She didn\u2019t want to exist solely on the kosher food at the Jewish […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family-history-not-boring"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28821"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28821\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28937,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28821\/revisions\/28937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/small><\/p>\n![\"Julia](\"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/home\/yiddis6\/public_html\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Julia-Stratton-2-1920-2004-with-her-children-Leslie-front-and-Bert.-1953.-300x293.jpg\")