Last week, I pushed the crotchety
side-eye-wheeled shopping cart
down the too-narrow
slightly claustrophobic Dairy aisle
at my local grocer’s.
I dodged crouching employees
stocking yoghurts and enormous
vertical stacks of sour cream
veering into my path
like calcium-enriched icebergs.
Meanwhile, my kid, unfazed
by the chaos that laid before us
had said “Mom! I need string cheese!”
She grabbed the jumbo-sized bag
stretching at the seams with what
looked like 48 units of cheese
— enough to feed two squealing
classrooms of first graders.
“Um." I begin.
"Are you really sure you want this?
You will really want to eat them all?
You’ve complained in the past
about cheese making your stomach
feel 'sick and blah.'"
"And I bought you 18
mozzarella ball packets
just over two weeks ago
and you didn’t eat a single serving
— not one! Before they expired.”
She remained undeterred
if anything her combative
energies had been activated:
“NO MOM!
I LOVE CHEESE STICKS!
I will OBVIOUSLY EAT THEM ALL.”
So cut to this morning
as I search for my ten a.m. snack
and see 47 sticks left to go
and she'd eaten that one on the
car ride home from the store.
String theory:
you never have enough
but always far too many
burdensome batons
of deeply desired yet
duplicitously detested cheese.
Now I'm off to ask generative AI
if I can use my thirty-two pounds
of cast-off cheese sticks
like Halloumi; fry those sad dry logs
in a pan of olive oil, then
drizzle with honey and herbs
And what to pair with this dish?
Perhaps a glass of wine
— and delicious silence.
