Someone says to write something. Get un-blocked. Something, anything, could just be your grocery list. As if starting there was an insignificant and mindless step toward productivity. But what people don't know? Is that all you can write, all you have wanted to write for years, is the perfect grocery list. That grocery list writing is its own arcane art with its own set of particular rules. In its full flowering it is something that can be masterfully planned and lovingly laid out, with sub-lists in little sections corresponding to the layout of the market, maximizing the efficiency of the visit and eliminating backtracking, wandering, forgetting. There's the double list, the one for this grocery over here with the good satsumas and then one for this grocery over here with the cheaper toilet paper. The grocery list that knows already how many nights you're eating in, who has a late meeting, when you'll need to resort to scrambled eggs. The list that knows what needs to be used up, what's in season, what's on special. A whole list attuned to your toddler's entire fascinating gastrointestinal system. A list that tells you it's a week for a six-pack or a case. A list that no one else can write as well as you and a list whose value, sadly, no one else can understand like you.
Because no one is supposed to lavish this much time on a stupid fucking grocery list when you need to write a book and raise a human being. So you don't share: I have mastered list making, I am a champion of grocery shopping, I can slay you in the organized refrigerator game. You worry instead that this is a disorder or misdirected energy or what people mean by "mommy brain." But it's a start, anyway, of writing something, anything. Your grocery list. Your defense of its beauty.
