When we arrived I was surprised that Victor didn’t immediately run to his old favorites. He went to the spinning chair first which I am pretty sure he wasn’t interested in at all before and then to the teeter totter. When he went to the structure it seemed that he had already outgrown it—he didn’t even want to go down the slide once. We went back to a slide that you could only access with a tall vertical ladder. When he was smaller he could barely climb it and would hold my hand behind him in case he slipped. It was as if he remembered the scarier moments on that ladder because he declared that he couldn’t do it. But once he started climbing he realized that he had grown up and it was no problem at all. He made me get up there too and go down one of the two slides. After a while he went to a rope climbing structure designed for bigger kids. I always steered him away from it before but now I couldn’t stop him. The only problem with Rossi Park is that it way too many teenagers from a nearby school use it as an after school destination. Although most of them are well behaved they sometimes spontaneously take to chasing each other and running down small children or taking up the spaces on the teeter totter. Between activities Vic chased after pigeons yelling “shoo shoo” just like old times. He talked about playing with Melissa’s daughter S under the tree. It’s odd to think of a two year old having the capacity to be nostalgic.
After playing for a while it was time to go pick up Vida from soccer. When we were all driving home down Irving Street Victor finally realized that we had missed our visit to the store and he started yelling that we had to stop at the store for “something good”. As it happened we were right near the Golden Bear Market on 6th and Irving. Vida was excited to participate in Vic’s Market and ironically we had visited this market together many years ago after going for dinner at You See Sushi across the street. I was thrilled to see the two narratives meeting. When I told Vida the story of our original visit she declared that we should have dinner at the market. Cup O’ Noodles was of course the only menu option she was interested in. The market is brightly painted yellow and green and there is a colorful wooden cut out of a California Golden Bear just outside the door. The market looks great from the outside but the “Under New Management” permanently displayed in the window detracts a little. The owner or worker behind the counter when we walked in was decidedly unfriendly and eying us suspiciously or maybe I’m becoming paranoid. We walked in to a hand written sign that said, “welcome to your neighborhood store where the prices are good”. The metro shelves were not well stocked and there were plenty of unopened cases on the floor.
In fact Victor tripped over some boxes of ketchup and ended up sitting on them. There were lots of hand written “sale “ signs which made me a little sad thinking that they had time to hand write signs for expiring crackers and cereal but couldn’t quite get the energy up to unpack the groceries from the boxes.The groceries were definitely playing second fiddle to a large wall of wine and plenty of wine case stacks, unusual in small grocery stores. We found Vida’s soup and then wandered around until Victor could find what he wanted. He picked out a bag of Hershey’s chocolate chips. This wasn’t exactly the kind of snack I had in mind but he was so cute hugging the bag to his chest that I couldn’t say no. I went back to the beer cooler and picked up a 24 oz Budweiser in a can. We made our way to the counter to pay the surly man. There was a tip jar on the counter with another hand written sign that said, “Business is good thanks to you”.
Vic’s Snack—chocolate chips Vida’s Snack—Cup O’Noodles—Beer of the Day 24 oz Budweiser can
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