18-oz. box of Shredded Wheat – $5.31
52 ozs. (not even half a gallon) of milk – $5.65
15 ozs. (just shy of a pound) of butter – $5.41
1 baking potato – $0.84
1 can Progresso Minestrone – $3.43
1 Stouffer’s frozen entree (single serving) – $4.31
1 3.6-oz. cup of Haagen Dazs ice cream (my guilty pleasure) – $1.93

I’m over $25 already, and I only have some odds and ends and a dessert. Okay, and a couple of extra bowls of cereal. But no meat, no veggies, no fruit yet — not even a loaf of bread ($4.97). So what is wrong with this picture?

Nothing, if you’re wealthy. But how many of us are? Come on . . . raise your hand if you’re filthy stinkin’ rich. Nobody? I thought not. Because those one-percenters aren’t reading my blog or surfing on Facebook. They’re snacking on caviar and champagne aboard their yachts on the Mediterranean, when they’re not working 24/7 to earn their next hundred million.

*. *. *

So what’s my point? Um . . .

Wait a minute . . . I know I had a point here somewhere. It was . . . Oh, right! It wasn’t to moan and groan about inflation, or Medicare, or Elon Musk’s most recent $48,000,000,000 (that’s $48 Billion) compensation package from Tesla — although I could find a few choice things to say about that last one.

No, it’s just that the cost of this week’s groceries brought me back a few years . . . actually, a lot of years . . . to when I was 13, and my grandmother came to stay with us while my mother was in the hospital for ten days.

First, Mother wasn’t in danger of dying. In fact, she wasn’t even sick. She was having cataract surgery on one eye, which in those days was a huge deal: both eyes patched so she couldn’t watch TV, read, or see anything at all. And her head was sandbagged so she couldn’t move it. It was horrible. The last thing she needed was to worry about my sister and me, so our Bubbe came down from Rhode Island to D.C. to make sure we didn’t destroy the apartment, or run off with a couple of losers from the neighborhood. And to cook for us, which was the best part. I know I’ve mentioned her cooking before, more than once.

So while Mom lay immobilized in the hospital, we ate like princesses. And while I was at school and my sister at work during the day, our already clean apartment got cleaned again to within an inch of its life, while the neighbors gathered in the hallway to try to determine where the incredible side-by-side odors of cleaning products and stuffed cabbages were coming from.

On her second or third day there, Bubbe found her way, by herself, to the grocery store for provisions, for which our mother had given her money before leaving for the hospital. And when I got home from school that day, she was practically in tears.

“Bubbe, what on earth is the matter?”

“Oh, your mother’s going to be so mad at me. I don’t know what to do.”

“Well, tell me what you’ve done. It can’t be that bad.”

I figured at the very least she had broken one of my mother’s treasured Hummel figurines.

Taking a deep breath — more of a sob — she finally blurted out: “Well, I went to the store. You know, the one up the street?”

“By yourself? You should have waited for me to go with you!”

“What am I . . . a little girl you should have to walk with me? I can go to a store by myself. Anyway, I bought a chicken for roasting, and a brisket, and some potatoes and carrots and onions, and a few other things . . . “

“Yeah, yeah, fine. But what’s the problem?”

More inhaling/sobbing. Then, finally: “She’s going to kill me. I didn’t know everything was so expensive here. I spent five dollars!”

Oh! My! God! She spent five dollars!

And I did what any loving, respectful granddaughter would have done to make her grandmother feel better: I laughed. Because even in those days (somewhere in the 1950s), five dollars — the cost of a loaf of bread today — was not a lot for groceries.

After Bubbe stopped yelling at me for being so rude and unfeeling, I was able to calm her down by explaining to her what we usually spent on a week’s groceries, and everyone felt better. And we three ate like royalty for several days on that same five dollars.

To keep things in perspective, however, let me explain that my mother and my sister each had office jobs that paid — before taxes — $50 a week. Our rent, as I recall, was something like $75 a month for an ordinary, un-air-conditioned, two-bedroom apartment. And my mother managed to put aside the money to pay for my weekly piano lessons.

It was a very different world then. We didn’t have a car, so we walked or rode the bus everywhere. We didn’t have desktops, laptops, iPads or iPhones, so we read a lot more books and played board games. And we talked to each other . . . face-to-face . . . about everything.

And we didn’t know about cholesterol, or sodium, or ketoacidosis, so when Bubbe told us to “clean our plates because there were children starving in Europe,” we happily complied. I never pointed out to her that my eating every bite of my dinner wasn’t going to help those poor starving children; it would have broken her heart. And I couldn’t do that; I loved her too much.

The ten days passed quickly — though not so much for our poor, sandbagged mother. She did survive it, of course, and by the time she had the cataract removed from the other eye years later, it had become an outpatient procedure and my sister and I were old enough not to need a visit from Bubbe. In any event, she had passed away by then, taking with her the secret of how to feed three people for a full week on five dollars.

*. *. *

So would I give up my air-conditioning, my car, my electronics, and all of today’s other sources of comfort and instant gratification to go back to those simpler days? I know my answer to that question. What’s yours?

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
6/15/24