Lessons From A Grocery Store

Get in loser, we're going to Substack

If the title of this new writing endeavor sounds familiar to you, congrats and thank you; it means you have been in my life a fairly long time. Long enough to remember the podcast Jen and I hosted for a few seasons that shares the same name. Long enough to have been through a lot with my family. Don’t worry, I got an enthusiastic green light from Jen to use this name for my Substack (11 months ago, when I first began ruminating about starting one but kept putting it off, because I’m a scaredy cat).

Whether you recognized that title or have just found your way to me recently, you’re now joining me on my latest pursuit; we’ve uprooted our family and moved to Germany. The how and why of that I’m sure I can get into in later editions of these essays. There is so much I want to share and talk about with you, and this seems like the best way to document my thoughts, feelings and experiences of being a American that moved to Germany, a woman raising a baby overseas, the honors and pitfalls of missing home, the current state of affairs here and there, along with the many other topics I’m invested in that are all connected in some way.

Last fall, I thought for weeks about what to call this, and nothing really felt right, even though creating a place where I can write, explore and discuss with you in a more in-depth way the many confluences of my life did feel right. Then Jen gave me the go ahead to transition the title A Little Salty to this different format, and a little salty still pretty much sums it up most of the time.

Substack keeps suggesting that I use this first post to tell you exactly what you’ll get when these hit your inbox once or twice a week if you subscribe. I don’t want to do that. I do want to tell that I don’t want to talk about types of diet labels anymore, I don’t want to consider the Instagram algorithm when making decisions about when or what to post. I don’t want to be limited to typing a bunch of little blips on Instagram stories about things I do want to share, but still not having the space on that tiny format to fully express myself, the context, nuance or history. Then just to have all that time I put into it expire and be gone forever after 24 hours. I know I do need to get back to “posting food” on that platform pretty soon here after taking a very long time off while we got settled in a brand new country, but I don’t want to do it at the expense of not having a place to also be fully myself, which is where this publication comes in.

I want to write about the intersection of our collective history with issues we’re facing today. I want to write about things that teach you something interesting you didn’t know before or make you curious about something you weren’t before. I sometimes want to be spicy about whatever I’m salty about that day and I sometimes want my optimism to take the lead. I want to share the big and small experiences, revelations, and difficulties I have here in Germany (and in life) that I can’t as easily on Instagram.

I want a place to be more vulnerable about all of it, but with people who don’t fill my inbox with hate. I want to talk about current events and books and politics and family and America and the world and the good people doing great things and the people doing not so good things. I want to talk about personhood, womanhood, motherhood. I want to write about the interconnectedness of all of it and all of us in a way that adds value to your life, even if in a small way. So I am sorry to Substack, but I just don’t want to tell you the one thing you can expect; instead I want to just let it be what it is and let it become what it will, without labelling it right off the bat.

I am also under no illusions about this or about my importance in the world at large. So even though it took me 12 months to realize, I know that what I want to share here and the thoughts and experiences of a relative nobody will matter to very few people, so it doesn’t matter what I label this Substack’s genre or subject matter as, not really anyway. It’s freeing in a sense to finally come to that conclusion, that I can just do it even if it’s scary, and let it be perceived how it may.

This entire move started off as what felt like a giant trust fall with myself and so far that method has been working. I haven’t crashed to the ground yet anyway. Still falling, still trusting myself in the process. However, I knew that once we got here (Germany) I would have anxiety around… everything. I wasn’t wrong. Germany is an amazing place and pretty awesome in a lot of ways and it is so strange and foreign in a lot of ways.

Every little thing that was simple and easy, something you just know how to do without thinking about it in the United States because it was familiar, is now unknown, out of my comfort zone and generally sends me into an anxiety spiral for days or hours prior to having to actually complete said task or activity. Little tasks now require researching how to do xyz, reading forums, reading official websites, language translations. Then add in the anxiety of doing it, and it feels like each one requires the mental and emotional energy of running a marathon. Think: going to the post office, setting up utilities, buying a light fixture, making a phone call. Going to the grocery store.

There are so many differences between German grocery stores and the ones in the US that I’ve been going to for 31 years. The first few times I went grocery shopping here, I probably would have told you that the only similarity the two shared were that they were both buildings that sold food.

I would be anxious enough about knowing a grocery store trip was going to be necessary soon that for a day or two prior I’d worry about everything, every real or imaginary situation, and work it up in my head to be this big, monumental ordeal that I was destined to mess up and walk out having been made a fool of. I never felt this way when visiting a grocery store on a trip or a vacation, so it took me by surprise to realize I was treating it differently being I lived here. It felt more personal. The people I would encounter there I very well may see again, unlike when it’s a vacation visit. I had to live in this neighborhood, so as silly as it may seem to you, or even to me now, it seemed pretty important that I didn’t become the lady everyone in town pointed and laughed at for how ridiculous she was in the store that day. My concerns about what I didn’t know really felt like valid things to worry about.

How did it work? What were the rules of the road, the cultural norms and processes? Everyone will surely be able to take one look at me and be able to tell I am an idiot who has no idea what the hell they are doing. What if someone tries to talk to me? Will people be nice to me? Am I supposed to weigh the vegetables.. in kilos?? How is Edeka different than Aldi, should I go to Kaufland where I read there are self-checkouts to avoid having to talk to anyone and expose myself as an imposter who doesn’t belong here? I am going to have to talk to someone at the meat counter so I need to memorize the words and numbers to ask for the meat and weight I want. On and on.

Even with all that pre-planning, I still made (and make!) many mistakes. I buy vegan sour cream on accident, or heavy cream instead of sour cream. I get the wrong type of roast that I don’t know how to cook because the 15 cuts aren’t the same ones we had in the States. I still get confused about all the types of sliced cheese options that we never had and I don’t know what the word translates to. I mistakenly grab the wrong milk because the percentages are different than what I’m used to. I stood in front of the automatic bread slicing machine looking clueless and pressing wrong buttons.

Fast forward and difference between then and now is that I happily volunteer to go to the store, excited to spend an hour wandering the aisles. I bounce out the door with my Edeka-branded cardboard box I’ll use to bring groceries into the house, being plastic bags are a sin here. I’ve made friends with (or, more, I am friendly with) a few of the employees. I navigate the store with ease, familiar and comfortable with the differences of the sausages, many new-to-me fruit varieties, the breads, oats, cream of mushroom soup options. My husband and I like to drive to other towns and check out other chains. For fun. I even write my grocery list in German now. These are all skills I didn’t have before, things I once didn’t know how to do that became muscle memory. 

The physical simplicity yet emotional complexity I assigned to this one necessary requirement that is buying food is almost humorous in the ways it parallels so many other aspects of our lives. It’s given me greater insight on why we as adult humans fear, put off, or avoid altogether change or trying new things or putting ourselves in situations to be perceived by others, even if we know that everyone was new at everything once. Even if our past experiences tell us nothing catastrophic happened on account of our newness or mistakes, it’s the potential of it happening that can hold us back.

My husband and I now refer to doing new German-Life-Things that give us anxiety for one reason or another (or many) as “going to the grocery store” in jest. And while it may be a joke, under the surface it’s a gentle and loving way to remind each other, and ourselves, that the things out of our comfort zone can only stay there if we’re unwilling to try.

Of course now at the time I am writing this, it is easy to make light of, but only because we are on the other side of that particular new thing. It was not funny or fun trying to work myself up to get out of the car and walk in knowing the high likelihood that I would look or, more importantly, feel dumb in front of my neighbors at least a few times. It’s that feeling we try to avoid as much as possible that keeps us from having new experiences, and it’s also that feeling that tells us we have the option to do something that expands our capacity for growth.

Starting this Substack, 12 months after creating my account and writing but not publishing, is why I am telling you this story about the grocery store and how it makes me feel exposed to failure and feel “perceived” by other humans in a way I don’t particularly run towards. This Substack and the grocery store remind me of a philosopher that was born almost 350 years ago; an ol’ wise guy named George Berkeley. His work largely centered around the idea of perception. Two of his main philosophical arguments or beliefs were: 1) Anything which is not perceived by someone else cannot be said to exist. It is only when something is perceived can we say that this thing is in the world. 2) If no one can perceive something, that something does not exist in any meaningful way.

Of course you can argue against that first one pretty easily, because obviously if I draw a picture and no one sees it, it’s still there; and for the second, “existing meaningfully” can mean different things to a lot of people. However, for the sake of the point here, we can assume he was more-so referring to the idea that if this thing isn’t put out into the world to live among others beyond yourself, it doesn’t really exist because it’s still safe and sound where no one can perceive it. And, for his second point, we can assume he was saying that by keeping it from the world, it doesn’t even have a chance to be meaningful to those who would perceive it because it doesn’t yet exist until it is put out there. It is scary to be perceived, to put ourselves out there in spaces we don’t yet know how to move comfortably in, to try new things or meet new friends. It can take some courage and practice and a little bit of saying “screw it let them perceive me”.

What once seemed scary is something I now enjoy and look forward to. What once seemed abnormal is my new normal, and what I was once worried about people’s potential judgements of me for no longer bothers me. There are so many things we hold ourselves back from trying or going all in on with our full selves because they involve something we haven’t done before, and doing it would be abnormal to us right now. So many new experiences, people, hobbies, places, goals or just simple pleasures we withhold from ourselves for fear of the unknown in favor of our comfort in what’s already familiar. Because they often come with the risk of being perceived.

If the German grocery store has taught me anything, it’s that after the first time, or first few times, something isn’t as big and scary anymore.. we just have to be brave enough to give it a try. Things are only new until they’re normal. So while I launch this Substack out into the world today, maybe this week you can find a ‘grocery store’ to try in your own life that stretches the boundaries of your comfort zone, and maybe it will become your new normal too.

More soon, and thanks for being along for the ride with me.

- B