Bye Bye, BBB

I’ve seen many stores go out of business over the years. I remember when Foley’s closed. My parents purchased many of my piano competition dresses from Foley’s back in the day. My in-laws bought two sets of dining tables and chairs during their closing sale. They gave us one table when we got married and it’s the table we eat off daily. I remember watching Super 1 Foods close as a child. It became Rainbow Foods for a while and then disappeared altogether. I remember when Service Merchandise disappeared. 

The red trim.

In the last 10 years, I remember watching Sears close. My daughter has actually been to a Sears before although she will never remember. I remember going to their store closing sale, pushing her in her stroller when she was less than a year old. We made the mistake of leaving the house without a diaper or wipes - it was one or both. And she happened to have a blow out. We laid a blanket under her bottom in the car seat and then strapped her in to go home and change. I’ve even commemorated this event in one of her baby photo albums. 

Another store is closing now. I’ve loved Bed Bath and Beyond since I was a child. My aunt was the person who introduced this store to me and she knew it was one of my favorites. When I was in high school, we visited my aunt and she took my cousins and my brother and me out shopping. She was going to Bed Bath and Beyond and the boys were going to Target next door to look at electronics and video games. She asked me if I wanted to go with her or the boys. Guess where I chose to go? 

Target. 

Now as an adult and a female, Target sounds very appealing to go wander for any amount of time. However, I didn’t have that appeal as a teenager. Target felt like a grocery store to me. (Yes, I distinguish the difference now, but this was nearly two decades ago.) So why didn’t I go with my aunt? 

I wanted to call a boy and I couldn’t do that next to my aunt. I could easily run away from my cousins and brother, and the truth was, they didn’t care. Alas, it ended up being a terrible decision because I had neither a pleasant phone conversation nor an enjoyable time with the boys. I recounted this whole experience in my first book, and as much as I cringe at my own memories, I am thankful some of them have been written down or else they would be lost in the abyss of history that is my past. 

When we got married, we registered at Bed Bath and Beyond. They were the quintessential wedding registry. We went in store and used the little scanner guns going around the store scanning items. We received a number of gift cards from friends and family which we’ve had no problems using in the last nine years. I hoarded the coupons every time they came in the mail. For the longest time, they let you use expired coupons. The most valuable ones were $5 off a $15 purchase or $10 off a $30 purchase. In my email, I even received coupons that were $20 off $75. There were coupons for all types of purchases, big or small. It was just playing the game of which coupon I had for which purchase I wanted to make. 

Buy Buy Baby was their sister company. I never stepped foot in one until I was pregnant with my first child. Did you guess it? I was hooked. It became my favorite store to walk in as a new parent to buy the random miscellaneous things I thought I needed to survive this new stage of life I was in. They also accepted Bed Bath and Beyond coupons for a while so I could save both and use them interchangeably at the stores. I’ll never forget the giant blown up pictures of babies they put up in their store foyer which were visible from the parking lot. My daughter aptly knew that store as the “baby store” because of those images. 

It definitely feels like the end of an era for me. I had an entire envelope of coupons saved up which I tossed out recently when they stopped accepting coupons. There will never be any more blue and white flyers arriving in my mailbox with a giant 20% on one side. My email inbox will be slightly cleaner due to less subscription emails coming through. Although the store hasn’t officially closed yet, I won’t be stepping foot in one anymore. I went last week for the last time when they bumped up their sale to 60-80% off everything. Most of the store was already cleared out. Only very miscellaneous type items are left in the sizes/styles that are least preferable. 

Bye Bye, BBB.

Summer Memory

My kids have been waking up the earliest in their entire life this summer. Most of it is due to waking up for school a few days a week, and part of it is just changing habits. So this week, on a non-school day, they woke up early and I took them to the nearby playground at 8:30 in the morning. For summer, this is great. We get an early start, it's not crowded, and we avoid some of the heat of the sun. 

I don't ever regret having two kids. Was it hard at first? Most definitely. Having a newborn at home during the rise of Covid and not having anyone help us, and both of us returning to work (from home) after six weeks was brutal. I don't remember how I managed to find time to cook. We did not clean the house for months at a time. But we survived. 

Nowadays I'm quite grateful I have two children. They play together, they help each other, they comfort each other, and they also cause each other some emotional distress at times. But for the most part, it's wonderful having two children. And watching them play on the playground together while I sit on a bench off to the side in the shade is quite nice, even if it only lasts for about five minutes. 

However, what I didn't expect while sitting on that bench was to be filled with a memory from over 20 years ago. Suddenly, I remembered a day when my mom, my brother, and I walked down the street to the nearby elementary school and played on the playground in the back of the school. 

My brother and I were walking on the structures and my mom was standing off to the side watching us. At some point, one or both of us asked her to join us and play. I remember her being reluctant to come up to the structure with us, but eventually, she did come up and go down the slide at least once. She had to be extra careful because she had a catheter attached to her left lung and a chest shunt by her collarbone. 

That's one of the last positive memories I remember sharing with my mother as everything else revolved around medical procedures or piano pressures. And watching my own two children play on the playground on a Tuesday morning managed to resurface this long lost memory. 

This is what grief looks like after two decades. It doesn't hinder my daily life, but it still peeks out occasionally alongside layers of new experiences and life, enough to make me break down, if just for five minutes. 

Happy Birthday, Mommy.