“Did you take a wrong turn?”
An elderly man wearing a mask whose twinkling blue eyes peeked over the black fabric broke me out of scrutinizing the cracker shelves for keto pita chips. I mumbled some lame answer like, “My brother is in town and he doesn’t eat bread so I’m trying to find something that he can eat.”
The man laughed and said, “No, I’m talking about the Zabar’s bag you’re carrying. Zabar’s is in New York and you’re in Dayton, Ohio.”
He proceeded to tell me that he is Jewish and every year before Yom Kippur his neighbor gets on an airplane to New York City, goes to Zabar’s to get lox, bagels, and other traditional Jewish foods to bring back for the break-the-fast meal. He has been invited to these meals for a few years.
I told him that I had read about Zabar’s in a food magazine. On my last trip to NYC, I strolled through the grocery store, bought a Zabar’s reusable bag, ordered a bagel with a schmear, lox, tomatoes, red onion, and capers from the deli, and then walked over to Central Park to enjoy lunch on a park bench.
How fun that a reusable grocery bag brought a short but delightful conversation to a couple strangers passing in a grocery store aisle.
No comments:
Post a Comment