“Shopping with Mom”

“Worse, far worse, though than accompanying their mother to the grocery store was trailing behind her as she shopped for her own clothing. This experience exemplified for the boys a male rite of passage through which they would later have to pass as one half of a couple. The brothers would enter the women’s discount clothing emporium with her “Just for a peek” and finally emerge an hour later as bored and frustrated as little boys could get. Their mom would stride purposefully to a rack, then begin to slide hangered blouses to the side, one after the other, with such rapidity that they marveled at her wrist coordination. Apparently, she was capable of making instantaneous decisions on these items, because they would be relegated to the uninteresting side of the rack after the briefest of inspections. There was a variation in the pace of this sliding. After, say, ten rejections a pause would come, during which time she would lift the blouse off the rack and turn it sideways so that it was fully visible; then she would prop up her forward foot on her heel, scrunch up her left shoulder and tuck her bent head into it, gazing at the clothing from a side angle and an upward perspective (apparently the scrunching and the slight squint of the eyes facilitated the process). Finally, with a brisk shake of her head and thick falls of hair, she would reject the item, hang it back on the rack, and slide it even more forcefully to the left, as though it were a child who failed to live up to his potential, disappointing her more in its failed possibilities than the others had by having shown no hope at all.”