Today was months in planning. Little Guy adored his two previous trips to Pike Place Market. It seems like forever I've been jockeying to get us a full day there and Big Guy a full day to attack the hoard without us underfoot-- but the cold hard fact is it is $5 in busing for fun and everything else comes first.
So today was our big day out at long last. Yesterday I'd double-checked all the most current online information for what we'd need to do to eat and shop. Good ride in, then our visit started with the Hammering Man, the view of the water, the lifesized Sasquatch statue (that he remembered), the glass elevator, the midair squid, and bubblegum alley. Got a big smile at the market office from someone who had the promised map of the few establishments that have actually succeeded in jumping through all the hoops necessary to take food assistance.
But I'd completely forgotten the summer-crowd phenomenon-- the living wall. Other parents using strollers like battering rams to force a way through and me side by side with an unarmored toddler who freezes under stress. Breakfast first, I decided-- breakfast first, then come up with a new plan. Through the press of humanity to the bakery, where we successfully fought our way around two of three counters to make a selection, wait our turn in line, get all rung up, and--
--the bakery's equipment for processing food assistance was down. They couldn't sell to us. Deep breath, check the map-- maybe they have some baked goods at the Mexican grocer? Through the press of humanity to find out! No baked goods today, just hot foods food-ass can't cover. I used two dollars of our monthly ration to get us a fat square of homemade coconut candy and forced our way to a tiny corner bench under a stairwell so we could get something in our stomachs, but it turned out to be stale as a stone and inedible. Little Guy tried his best, stubbornly gnawing at his long after I'd given up, then trying to hand it to me to "fix" at which point it ended up on the sidewalk and I drug him away.
Surely the big deli-grocer way down on the other end off the Market office map was set up to take food assistance? Through the press of humanity, wait in line to ask-- the answer was no. Back through the press of humanity looking for the special tent described on the website, the one that turns food assistance into special double-value tokens to encourage low income peeps like me to buy local produce. There was no sign of it. Checked the food assistance map, what can we eat? through the press of humanity to the cheesemonger. There were no lines, no other customers, and nothing I could do caught the shopkeepers eye. He actually left his counter, walked out the door and away with my tiny tyke and I standing there waiting for service. A few minutes later he came back and walked right past us without saying a word, went right back to his busywork without looking at us--
and I ought to be able to cope with this in a simple, effective believing the best of people manner but I haven't eaten and I'm two days out from the woman in the PCC parking lot pretending I and my child weren't there because she assumed I was a beggar and just a few weeks out from the homeowner who actually left her house and came across the street to harangue my little family into leaving the park she lives by because we didn't look middle class enough to have a right to be in her neighborhood and I need to eat to think and can't
and I break and bolt with my hungry child wrapped against me.
So smurf the whole local living healthy food thing, we haul smurf to smurfing TARGET. Because, surely, every Target location is set up to take food assistance, right? Since the working poor are their Target market? Right? All I have to do to find out is to wait through the line with food in my hands and my heart in my throat and my two year old little boy who has at this point been promised food is imminent four different times from for different places looking at me... and I can't do it. I look at our reflections in the glass of the drinks coolers and see myself shake.
We'd hit crisis at this point. I was on the verge of not being able to take care of him or myself. The hideous part was knowing that there were solutions I was missing, other things I could be doing, IF only I could get enough food to function.
Then the sight of the Larabars at Target reminded me of the untouched emergency Larabars stashed in our big red bag. One last two block walk to the food court in the old Borders building, past the big signs on the door that only eating customers of these fine establishments may come use the furniture, past the two security guards on duty, all the way to the farthest end of the lobby. We hunkered on a sofa facing away from them and my little guy inhaled one bar and asked for more but I'd already eaten the other two.
Then I let the food take effect, gathered myself, and marched up to the security guards to try to pick their brains about an underground grocery store that I knew took food assistance, it used to be a couple blocks away but I could never remember just where. They tried to send us on foot out to the Whole Foods on South Lake Union-- not.
So I told my little guy he'd have a chance to run in Westlake Park and play in superhero fountain, but when we got there the fountain was off and all the open space filled up with cafe seating and summer projects.
So we went up all the layers of Westlake Mall looking for the information booth in hopes they might have an idea of a downtown central place to use food assistance, but the information booth is gone because, hey, what kind of loser needs live help in these days of smartphones?
I was tired enough, hungry enough, and cracked enough to actually think of hopping the tunnel bus down to Uwaijimaya's for some food and then bouncing my boy through Pioneer Square to rescue our day, but, of course, there are no more free tunnel buses.
And that was the point at which this conversation between me and my two year old little boy happened:
"Eema, why aren't we getting food?"
"Because no one will take the kind of money we have, son."
"Eema, why don't we have real money? Why don't we have any money, Eema? Why don't we have any money?"
Stick a fork in me, I'm done.
We went down to the tunnel and caught the next bus back to our own neighborhood, back to our little five block box where I can take care of us. The new reduced fare pass didn't work and I stood there with my baby in my arms letting everybody else press past us while the bus driver decided whether or not to let us ride.
We got to Fred Meyer's. We got food. The rest of the day was a series of better-managed setbacks. (In case of being locked out, do not hesitate to walk to your neighborhood library. They will be happy to call your husband for you.) The Big Guy's day was no better.
Sitting down that evening to a table full of friends, a bowl of pasta, a glass of homemade kombucha, and a wedge of the sweetest watermelon I've had in my life, I experienced this "Calgon, take me away" moment of joy and serenity in the wisdom of the Jewish tradition of ending a day at sundown.
Because some days just need to be declared OVER.
