Mar 30, 2017 4 min read

Once a month, I meet my son at the grocery store for a stroll down memory lane.

He’ll be 22 soon, and is living in an apartment during his senior year at the university. He’s not quite past the age of being mothered (and never will be, really), and this occasional trip through the aisles is one of the few times I have left to actively mother him.

College men are not known for their excellent nutrition. The year he had a part-time job delivering hoagies, that’s pretty much all he ate. And based on his jammed schedule of classes and internships, I’m guessing those hoagies supplied more of the four food groups than he usually gets. With me pushing the cart – and holding the purse strings – the shopping trip gives me a tiny bit of influence. I may not be able to cook it for him, but I can buy it.

“Apples?” I say as we enter the produce aisles. “Put some in your backpack and you’ll always have a snack.” He puts three red delicious in a plastic bag. I point out that the honey crisps are much better. He empties the bag and starts over. He’s a good boy.

“Green beans?” I say. The years he played high school football, he ate fresh green beans by the bushel, sautéed in the wok with oil and garlic. Me, I’d be sick of them, but he lobbed a big package into the cart. He starts picking through the loose potatoes, choosing them one by one, inspecting like a diamond merchant.

“The five-pound bag is a better buy,” I say. He grabs a 10-pounder and slides it onto the bottom of the cart. I think this might be a good time to talk about reading the price-per-unit labels, but by then he’s rolled away to the spaghetti aisle.

Jar after jar of Ragu goes into the cart, followed by boxes of pasta. I explain that, while the tomatoes in the sauce are technically a vegetable, spaghetti with red sauce lacks the essential amino acids.

“Does cheese count?” he asks as he pulls the largest jar of grated parmesan from the shelf. He used to call that “parmage.” He would sprinkle parmage on everything.

The chuck roasts are buy one, get one, and I buy him two. He says his roommate has a crock pot, and he’ll make stew. He leaves me for a minute to return to the produce department for carrots and onions, which makes my heart leap a little. He knows how to make beef stew!

There are things you learn about your kid only after he’s left the nest. As I was pricing frozen chicken breasts, he disappeared around the corner and returned with an armload of cleaning products: Windex and Mr. Clean and Comet and a 400-pack of paper towels. The package was so large it covered all of him from the waist up.

“Spring cleaning,” he said, and my heart leapt again. He ran back to the cleaning aisle and returned with two bottles of those beads you put into the dryer to make your clothes smell nice. I rejected that.

“You’re a poor college student,” I said. “You smell good enough.”

By the time we rounded the bend for the dairy aisle, there was only enough room in the cart for a dozen eggs and a gallon of milk. He was set for a month of meals.

“What will you cook tonight?” I asked as he pushed the cart to his car.

“Beef stew,” he said. Not prepared by mama, but close enough.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.