when I see a cart that toddler-you would have begged for – the kind with a little red car which you would have spotted immediately and shouted, “that one,” before running and jumping in and giving furious directions with your voice and arms, spinning the wheel as if it worked while I tried to hold onto the cart with one hand and, with the other hand, reach for the foods on the shelf from a distance you couldn’t manage to grab from inside the car because otherwise you grabbed everything and now I’m remembering that time you cried in the middle of the Giant Supermarket because there was, in fact, no giant there, and I pushed you past my then-therapist, who was interested in meeting you, this child I couldn’t console, but you continued to direct me through the supermarket, away from the foods I was there to buy while I wished I could food shop alone, the way I used to, wandering the aisles, slowly imaging the foods I could prepare all the while knowing that if I brought you along and taught you to check the prices, look for healthy options, then one day you could have your own cart, and when you finally did, you used to push it too fast, and stop equally too fast, in front of other shoppers or displays, causing me to abandon my own cart and run through the supermarket to keep up and slow you down, (“slow you down” feels wrong as a parenting metaphor) and I’d hope that you could one day come alone, popping out of the car to grab something, which you can do now, my almost teenager tall enough to reach the shelves I will never be able to reach, but today I am here alone, asking taller strangers to reach something for me and remembering how much we have argued while food shopping, but still, you learned and we laughed and picked out a treat – sugary cereal or a new cheese – and sometimes you still choose to come with me on this weekly errand, maybe only for the extra pack of gum you pick out, but maybe for the conversations we have along the way, assuming I don’t linger at the carts and tell you about when you were a child and how much I miss everything about that little boy.