cilantro or bust

[This was last year, thank God]

It’s Christmas Eve and I have no cilantro. 

If there were any other ingredient I could leave out of the guacamole I need to make for the measly five family members showing up tomorrow night for tacos, I would totally not get in the car and drive to the Always Crowded grocery store, not on this afternoon which will be at least as bad, and maybe worse, than the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, but it’s cilantro and there is no substitute for it on this earth. I get my keys and limp my apathetic self down the hall to the garage.

Three miles and two stoplights later, I choose a one-way parking lot aisle after passing three others clogged with angry SUVs. Just as I turn in, a woman there on the left, in the space farthest from the store entrance, pops her trunk and starts loading bags of groceries. On goes my left-turn signal, and I step on the brake far enough away (barely) that she can back out without hitting me. Impatient people in cars pile up behind me, into the through lane. Trunk-loading woman is ploddingly slow, one bag at a time, placing each … bag … with great … care … before reaching into the cart for the next … one. I am determined not to moan or howl or say “Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck” very slowly inside my car with the windows up. No, no, no, Amy Winehouse, don’t go there. Just wait. Breathe and wait.

Something catches my eye:  a woman, way down at the far end of the aisle, only three or four spaces from the store, is waving. At me! Because I have looked up, she knows I can see her, and she gestures to an empty space (I hope – I can’t see it) just past her car. I accelerate (not zooming because it’s a parking lot and I’m not insane) down the aisle, past at least a dozen cars, toward her, giving her a thumbs-up and mouthing “thank you,” tapping my fist on my heart so she knows I love her. She and her friend/mother/other woman grin at me, and she curtsies. God, we will be friends forever, whatshername and I. As I struggle, two-footed, hip stiff, out of the driver’s seat, I’m yelling, “THANK YOU” into the parking lot air and people are turning to look. Not smiling, just trying to see who the crazy person is.

I try to snag a cart from a guy who proceeds to shove one into the cart corral across from my car even as I say, “I’ll take tha- …” He doesn’t respond – not in a nice or even a nasty way – just looks through me with his zombie eyes, turns and walks away. My Chino’s reusable bags and purse and tied-up bundle of recyclable newspaper bags get flung into the cart, and off I go into the Maw of Ralphs.

Inside, it is chaos like I have truly never seen. Every checkstand is open, and each one has at least ten baskets/people in its line, though “line” is only vaguely descriptive of them. After the first four baskets in a row, people are doubling up to stay out of the through-walking area at the ends of the shopping aisles (and failing), so it’s just a scrum of shopping carts and pissed-off people and shrieking kids and dead-eyed Ralphs’ employees. I try to maneuver between anyone’s cart and the aisle-cap so I can get into * some part of the store that isn’t the checkout area, but no one is playing this game. I say “Excuse me” to a man who won’t turn his head to acknowledge me and doesn’t move. There is a man on the other side of Playing Deaf Guy who is saying “Excuse me” too and trying to move toward me, and he’s not having any luck. It’s a tense standoff. I motion to Excuse Me Man, and we wait until Playing Deaf Guy gets to move forward, then I block the basket behind him so Excuse Me Man can come through, then put my shoulder down, inch through the line and make a hard left into Frozen Foods. I’m in.

I wasn’t planning on it, but I got some vanilla ice cream because it was right there, which convinced me that I really should make Alice Waters’s Chocolate Cake for a Party instead of serving that crappy store-bought excuse for an apple pie that I got yesterday. Oh-kay, on a roll here. I’ll get cilantro and a couple more avocados for insurance, some light brown sugar for other insurance. I added a half-gallon of milk because I was trapped in front of the milk display for three minutes and had to do something.

Every aisle had people and carts in it, lots of them. Either no one remembered the grocery shopping rules or they had decided it was Hunger Games today. People parked their carts on the right side of an aisle and then took up the space between the cart and the left side of the aisle with themselves and several family members, arguing about which jarred pasta sauce to get. One woman left her cart and her kids – one pouting and staring at the ground, the other jumping around the cart like a rabbit – way down the aisle from where she stood, hands on hips, looking up intently at something near the ceiling lights. I figured she was trying to keep from hitting someone or screaming, so I snuck quietly past her and the kids and everyone else in that same aisle. Zig-zagging was essential. I couldn’t get around the checkout end of any aisle, so I had to go down an aisle, get what I needed, turn around and retrace to the back of the store, then left or right to the next turn-down. It was like following the shape of a comb. The produce department was the worst. People were reciting lists of what they needed out loud, looking around as if they thought they were in, I don’t know, Bass World or Toys R Us, instead of stopped between bananas and grapefruit. The employees were filling depleted bins of potatoes and lettuces and were being set upon by shoppers without a shred of patience (or humanity) left. No one smiled. No one looked as if they had *ever smiled.

There were only four or five cilantro bundles left in this little heap next to the parsley. Was everyone having guacamole tomorrow like us instead of roast beast and Yorkshire pudding like normal people? I grabbed one that didn’t look too trampled and headed back to the maelstrom to pay. Steely resolve, that’s what I need, I told myself.

I went all the way around the back of the store (for the fourth time) so I could sidle up to the Express lanes – ha ha ha ha ha!  The line I chose was four baskets, then one woman with a hand basket, then a guy with a terrible flower arrangement, then me, these last three of us curling around to stay clear of the pumpkin pie impulse kiosk. A Vietnamese woman pushed her cart right up behind Hand Basket Woman, effectively challenging Terrible Flower Man who was having difficulty with defining his personal space. He did this pacing-sideways thing as if he were truly incapable of standing still but wouldn’t stay close enough to Hand Basket to claim his place in line. When Vietnamese Woman inched forward, though, he lurched at her which caused her to back up and collide with this Staring Guy behind her. He made a yelping noise, so I turned to look more carefully at them, curious. The Vietnamese woman had on shorts, or at least a pair of cotton pants that seemed to have a zipper in the front. They were only about six inches from waistband (I use that term because I don’t have another one) to leg hem. They were pulled down (or allowed to drop?) like teenage boys wear their droopy jeans, and she had a tight cropped t-shirt on that stopped at the bottom of her rib cage. There was a vast (even for a small, short woman) amount of exposed skin that I could see, looking at her from the side. She turned her back to me when Staring Guy honked or snorted, exposing the view from behind. There was a large, smooth, featureless area of skin between her shirt and shorts, the most remarkable feature of which being that she had no ass-crack. None. Those shorts were so low that on any normal person, several inches of divided bum would have been visible. I swear to you: it was completely, utterly smooth. No wonder Staring Guy was staring.

Vietnamese Woman tried again to get into the awkward space ahead of Terrible Flower Man, but he cut her off and pointed to the Express 2 lane and nudged the front of her cart with his hand. Touching Another’s Cart is a major violation, and I figured I was going to witness fisticuffs next, but Smooth as an Egg Bum Woman gave in and moved left, dragging Staring Guy behind her like a magnet.

My line began to move quickly, Hand Basket Woman and Terrible Flower Man transacting their payments without incident, then me. There was minimal basket shoving around the poor bagging kids, and I made a wobbly beeline for the exit. The parking lot was worse than before.

I made my way around cars clogging the entrance/exit through lane and clicked Unlock on my key to open my car. Halfway down the aisle I saw a maroon minivan driven by a middle-aged guy with a receding hairline and a look of despair. I waved at him and pointed at my car while I opened the trunk and flung the Chino’s bag inside. He brightened, gave me a big circle-thumb-finger OK, smiled and and mouthed “Thank you.”

 Another best friend, or at least a person who inspires a tiny bit of hope in this supposedly but not usually felicitous season. If you look carefully, you can find these people in the most unlikely of places, even on the most terrible of days.