I saw the Trader Joe’s stickers tonight as I was cleaning out my car.
Does everyone know about the turtle hunting game at TJ’s? They hide several stuffed turtles around the store, and if your kid spots all of them, they can tell the cashier and they’ll give them a sucker OR the underwhelming stickers. You’re welcome.
First, let’s just call it what it is: the Trader Joe’s stickers are subpar at best. For such an incredible company, I feel like they could definitely beef up their sticker game. Their stickers are a mere step above the boring Target stickers which, lets be honest, are trash. They’re literally just red targets, the same stickers I find stuck to Target delivery boxes. In the same vein, the TJ’s stickers are just photos of dull flowers with muted colors, which is a far cry from the high standards Tru has set for her stickers (i.e. if it’s not Elsa or a vibrant unicorn whose colors assault your pupils, don’t even waste her time). As an aside, I never knew I’d have so many passionate opinions on stickers as a parent. But that’s neither here nor there.
Anyway, every single time Tru and I go to Trader Joe’s, she gets so excited for the second-rate stickers. She doesn’t even like or care about the stickers, yet she still wants them. (She has this whole being a woman thing down pat already, at the ripe age of newly three.) She begs me for the stickers at the checkout line, and I, in turn, prompt her to ask the cashier herself. She asks in her sweet, shy, shaky voice for a strip of stickers, and when the goods are securely placed in her little hands she is grinning from ear to ear.
That first sticker is rife with potential. Will it go on her hand? Her face? My car window, where it will stay for the next six to twelve months before I finally scrape it off with the help of Windex and a few curse words? By the second sticker, the excitement is waning a little, but she still manages to muster up enough enthusiasm to slap it across the headrest of my seat.
The third sticker is left untouched— along with the fourth, fifth, sixth and so on— never to be thought of again, like the carrot sticks in my kids’ lunches every damn day. She mindlessly drops the strip of now-boring stickers to the floorboard of my car (where it rests comfortably and familiarly with yesterday’s granola bar, last week’s rotted apple and approximately 47 water bottles. Why is it an unwritten rule that, as a parent, you must always have an inordinate amount of half-filled water bottles rolling around on the floorboard of your car at all times? And then you have to lug said water bottles into the house weekly— or daily? And you don’t even recognize yourself anymore if you don’t have an armful of half-filled water bottles? This phenomenon is not talked about enough, and I’m going to make it my mission to shed more light on this issue.)
And then tonight, unexpectedly, on a humid August evening on the eve of the first day of preschool, I spot the discarded stickers. And my stomach drops and I get that all too familiar feeling in the base of my throat and I feel butterflies— but not the good kind. The despondent kind. Depressed butterflies. Butterflies who need some ice cream and a chick flick. And maybe some Zoloft.
The mere sight of the stickers immediately triggers a slideshow in my mind (or should I call it a reel? Isn’t that what the kids are doing these days? Whatever, I almost called it a PowerPoint presentation initially, so l think everyone should just be content with “slideshow.”) I involuntarily witnessed a slideshow of my summer with Tru flash through my mind, like a montage of happier times during the saddest part of a movie. I see the stickers and I immediately see her, sitting in the Trader Joe’s basket, her skinny legs dangling free (and, most definitely, with no shoes on. For third children, shoes in public establishments are a pleasant surprise. Sometimes pants are a pleasant surprise. Okay, most times.) I see her tiny finger pointing to the bananas and babbling about how she loves “wama-melon” and asking for a snack every 7 seconds and asking me when Elsa is coming to her house. I see myself tired and drained from a summer of non-stop Tru, from not working out due to lack of childcare and feeling stagnant mentally and trying in vain to clean up the house and probably drinking too much wine.
I see myself in aisle three of Trader Joe’s (gotta stock up on those Barebell protein bars, guys— they are like candy bars. Maybe they are candy bars…? Is that why I’ve gained five pounds this summer? It could also be all the pizza. I guess we’ll never know.) Anyway, I see myself in the aisle, probably wishing I was alone and counting down the days until school starts. I see myself getting frustrated when she starts melting down because I won’t let her open the loaf of bread in the middle of the store. I see myself getting annoyed when she keeps asking me to watch Cocomelon on my phone. I see myself giving in (pretty easily) and giving her the show, just so I can get this errand over with and move on to the next million chores I have staring me down that day.
Yet in this moment, as I stand here staring at the strip of unused, inferior stickers in my car, my entire body longs to be in that aisle again with her at 8:47 on a Tuesday morning. I ACHE for it, in fact. It makes no sense, and I start to feel the tears welling up. And I know that tomorrow she starts school, and that we won’t be making early-morning Trader Joe’s runs anymore, and it makes me feel almost nauseous that it’s over. Of course, there will be more TJ runs with her in the future, but not at this exact age. Not at this exact time. And probably not at this leisurely pace.
And sure, we have next summer. But next summer she will be four. And she’ll be eligible for lots of summer camps. And I’ll of course sign her up for as many as possible (in effing JANUARY, waiting with bated breath at my computer with sweat trickling down my brow like a PSYCHO with the rest of Nashville), but her voice will be different. And her little legs will hang down a bit lower in the grocery cart seat. And she’ll probably have shoes on (okay, that’s a stretch, sorry). And maybe she’ll still ask for the boring stickers. But she might not be as excited for them. And I might not find her sticker strips in my car anymore. And then one day I’m going to wake up and realize I’ve been going to the grocery store alone, a lot.
Forget the water bottle phenomenon, guys— what we actually need to discuss here is how I can wish so hard for school to start and wish so hard to make a grocery run alone, yet when I’m finally faced with that reality, my heart physically aches. WHY AM I THE WAY THAT I AM? (A question I find myself asking entirely too much lately, mainly centering around my inability to not eat lots of cheese.)
I’ve been LIVING for the start of school. I’ve felt depleted and worn out and kind of like a shell of myself these last fews weeks. I want to exercise regularly and I want to keep a tidy home and I want to write more and I want to have an actual career and I want to go to the grocery store without bartering with a three year old over YouTube videos, and I can’t do any of those things when I have said three year old attached to my hip from sun up to sun down. And despite all of these feelings, the Trader Joes stickers almost brought me to my damn knees.
To anyone else, the stickers look insignificant. They look like what they are: trash cluttering up an already-messy car. (But honestly. that’s on the Trader Joe’s sticker designing team; maybe if they put some more of the budget into that instead of the employees’ Hawaiian button-downs, less stickers would be tossed in the dumpster.) My point is, it’s funny how, as a parent, otherwise inconsequential things start to have meaning— meaning that utterly rocks you when you least expect it.
After picking up the armful of water bottles from the car, I spent the rest of the night grieving the end of this summer with her and mourning the loss of those leisurely, sleepy, muggy summer grocery trips together, just the two of us. With no other agenda other than picking out the best snacks and making sure we got our hands on those silly stickers.
My only consolation is that all of us— every mom with a beating heart— feels this at some point, too. My trigger tonight was the stickers, but maybe yours is something more obvious, like taking down the crib, packing up the tiny clothes or donating the rest of the diapers. I might’ve actually said out loud tonight, a little too over-zealously, “at least we are all in this together!!!” And it made me feel better because, you know, misery loves company. And that comforted me immensely, because I guess I’m a jerk like that. And probably because I’ve been with small kids all summer. Or maybe that’s just who I am. WHY AM I THE WAY THAT I AM? (I told you this is a recurring theme in my life.)
Happy back to school, Mamas. We can mourn the stupid stickers, but we can also be happy for this next season of life. And at least our car windows won’t be ruined anymore.