Little Red Shopping Cart

I bought this little red shopping cart from a neighborhood shop up in Washington Heights back about 15 years ago. I bought it so when I went grocery shopping 6 flights down and 4 blocks away, I could roll my groceries home with ease. I remember that when I bought it the rubber smelled funny. Like it had come from a warehouse where there had been a fire. It smelled of smoke and ash. It was so bad that hosed it down in my Manhattan bathroom with soap and water - on two separate occasions. Still, the smell remained. I rubbed stuff into the rubber handle - Febreeze, other sprays, perfumes. Still, it kinda smelled. So eventually I locked it deep in a closet and only brought it out when I needed it. It was being punished for smelling bad.

Eventually I met my husband and we got married and moved into our house out in New Jersey. I brought the little cart with me. By then it didn't smell so much but I could detect remnants of that smell on it if I got close. I couldn't bear to part with it. It symbolized my independence. My New York singlehood. My attempts to deal with the difficulty of hauling things around Manhattan with no car, no help - self-sufficiency in a high lacquered red sheen with rubber wheels.

Here in New Jersey, it has lived in the closet in my husband's office. I thought there might be a time to bring it out and use it for this or that. But in suburbia there's very little call for carts of this type. So for the past 6 years it has just been lodged inside his closet. Punished for being unnecessary.

Today I have pulled it out because I'm taking it to Brooklyn. My mom, now newly single for the first time in over 43 years, has been learning late life lessons in self-sufficiency. She needs this cart more than I've ever needed it. I think it will see the light of day much more in its new home. Oh, and the smell seems to finally be gone.

It's got me thinking how much life changes us, the people around us. If you told me, 15 years ago, when I bought this little cart, that I would one day be giving it to my mom so she can do her grocery shopping, I would have looked at you sideways and sucked my teeth. No way. How can that even be possible? I could not have known then what a strange rite of passage was going to take place in the future. But here I am. About to hand off my little red shopping cart to my mom. Perhaps I will be writing about it again 15 years from now? One never knows.