let me tell you - No. 8
when the Blackburns go to Costco
I cannot tell you what came over us or why we thought this was a good idea, but at 5:30pm on a Wednesday evening, we decided to go to Costco. All of us. (That’s eight people, if you’re counting. And we are always counting.) I had eaten two slices of cinnamon toast, half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a bag of Annie’s cheddar bunny crackers and had one cup of coffee that day because nary a fruit nor vegetable could be found in a kitchen depleted by six kids + the four sweet and apparently hungry neighbor children who knock on the door at 3:25 every day.
(Did I just buy two dozen apples that were supposed to last, I don’t know, more than two days? I would have thought a week was reasonable, but between toddlers who take a few bites and then drop and run, and a few eight-year-olds who want theirs sliced with peanut butter and Can we each have one more, Mom? the apples I bought on Monday were gone on Wednesday––and are anybody else’s kids absolutely ravenous after school every day?)
(Really, this is fine. I would take out a loan if it means being the house with lots of snacks and lots of kids who want to be here. I really would.)
I digress. Let’s go back to Costco, where we will be taking mini-vacations for pizza dinners every week for the next 18 years as opposed to going on a real vacation, because we spent all our money on apples.
We needed food, and quite a lot of it - and now that I think about it that is obviously why we thought the witching hour was a perfect time to hit Costco: because we were starving. With a shopping list a few dozen items long in hand we started off through the store. Alex had two kids in one cart, I pushed two kids in another, and two were walking next to us.
After 45 minutes of cruising up and down the aisles (and by cruising I mean speed-walking, as we were keenly aware of the invisible timer accompanying the cooperation of six children) we had everything on our list, plus a few extras for the neighbor kids who were sure to return the next day. We approached the checkout line with two full carts and six wiggly children, who for all intents and purposes, had behaved very well up until this point. Cannon, my sweet, hilarious, Cannon, was one of the kids in my cart, because while he is seven, he does not stay with us well in places like Costco and thus if we can get him buckled in, we do. Being on the spectrum and being in a warehouse full of all sorts of goodies turns him into the likes of a really cute and playful puppy, who is also chasing a bird: very happy, but very unaware of pretty much anything else. On this night, he sat beautifully buckled in ... until the checkout line. And then he was over it. Who could blame him? We did have a very long list.
As he was climbing out of the cart, Ava was climbing out of the sweater two sizes too big for her, Beckett was opening the large plastic croissant container and yelling “I have one! I have one!” and Jordi was dropping boxes on his way from the cart to the conveyor belt, trying to be helpful.
Basically, everything was right on brand for the Blackburns.
The gentleman in front of us finished gathering his items and left, and then the young cashier, wearing a green short sleeve polo shirt, turned to help us. At this point, Cannon was in full, playful, “bird-chasing” mode and I was holding him back from taking off into the store; Ava had her arms and top fully unclothed, and Jordi was still fumbling items he had lifted out of the cart. Beckett was happy because he got the croissant out.
What I am trying to tell you is that it could have been much worse.
And still, the sweet young man, without a hint of rudeness in his voice, let his wide eyes meet Alex’s and said, “I’m not going to lie. This is kind of making me never want kids.”
Alex and I burst out laughing.
This poor guy, just trying to make a living helping people pay for their wholesale groceries and here we come, scaring him into permanent birth control decisions.
Cannon proceeded to lie down on the slick linoleum floor, then push his body backward, sliding along until his head bumped into the checkstand next to us. Harper was trying to get our very divided attention, yelling our names over and over to ask if she could go order the pizza, and green-polo-shirt-checker remained dumbfounded.
“How big is your car?” he asked as he swiped another item across the price scanner.
Ford Transit. Seats twelve. Drives great though!
“Do you have room for all this?” Another beep of the scanner.
It has a huge trunk. Big enough for two bikes and a double stroller. It’ll fit all this just fine.
“This all costs a lot of money!” Another beep.
Tell us about it.
“I don’t know how to handle this.” Beep.
Ha, neither do we.
“Do you have any time for self-care?” Beep.
Ummm...
If I am painting a picture of a crass, young jerk, I must correct that. He was honest with his thoughts, to be sure, but there was nothing malicious in his words. He was just a young man, working at Costco, probably thinking about his future and fiscal responsibility and how he likes to sleep, and then this loud crew of eight strolls on up and he was legitimately concerned about all of those things for us. Bless. His conversation made Alex and I laugh on and off for the rest of the night. Onlookers might see us and get sweaty; one kid is on the floor and one is half-dressed and one has food in his hand and the others are...somewhere... and we are looking at all of it thinking everything is normal.
And that, friends, is how we learned we’re doing ok. Day by day, we’re making it. Grace is there.
And thank God, so is Costco.
