Costco Memories: The Red Mixer

My husband Paul loved the Costco Wholesale Warehouse with a passion. He discovered it when it first opened on Route One in Danvers in 1990. Eventually, we went there together, pushing our basket up and down every aisle and taking in the fascinating new seasonal items (lawn chairs, umbrella tables, plants, pergolas, backyard storage sheds) or household and food products in super-sizes and quantities. The huge Cheerios boxes came packaged in bundles of two. The combined volume was so large that it pretty much filled half the cart — but the unit price made it impossible to pass up.

Our shopping basket, also oversized, became increasingly heavier and more awkward to maneuver, but the promotional samples of appetizers at the end of each aisle kept us moving along. After the culinary tour, Paul headed to the concession for the home run, a Hebrew National hotdog loaded with onions, relish and yellow mustard.

The Costco experience brings to mind an episode of “The Simpsons” in which Barney is shopping in a big box store eerily similar to Costco — “MonstroMart” — where nutmeg is sold in twelve pound containers. He accidentally tips over a display of human-sized cranberry juice bottles, causing a tidal wave to engulf the aisles and send everything in the store afloat in a red sea, including the panicked shoppers. The thought of this scene makes me laugh every time…..

My husband had his favorite sections. He stopped at the men’s clothing table to sort through the piles of sweatshirts and blue jeans for under fifteen bucks, frequently airing his pet peeve that many foolishly spend ten times more for the intentionally ripped and faded “fashionable” denim at Nordstrom. His brand of jeans was Kirkland, the not very glamorous Costco label for both food and clothing, completely “no frills.”

Paul headed directly to Costco at least once each week after he closed his beauty shop for the day. I didn’t always know where he was for the afternoon — he didn’t carry a cell phone — except when he left the occasional note in his scribbly handwriting, “Took Julianne shopping.” So many times I asked him to “Please call me at the office when you’re going to Costco so I can tell you what we need for the house.” He never did.

He returned home each time with just one or maybe a few random purchases that appealed to him on a particular day: a three-pound jar of kosher herring, a package of chicken sausages, a huge bag of mixed nuts, or a dozen rolls of paper towels when we already had a six-month stockpile. He always left with something . . . anything . . . to consummate the Costco experience.

COOKING BIG TIME

For many years, Paul was in charge of cooking for the monthly community dinners at our synagogue. He “commanded” the operation based on his army training, where he learned efficient food prep methods and most importantly, the rule that the kitchen needs to be totally clean and in order before any work begins.

He and his core crew designed the menu and then went to Costco the week before to purchase the huge quantities of provisions — good thing Paul had a pick up truck to transport the provisions for the sixty or seventy in attendance.  When the meal was served, guests marveled at the elegantly prepared plate. When he exited the swinging doors, dish towel in hand, he received thunderous applause and took a bow.

Paul and the crew fearlessly tackled Passover Seder preparation. In 2007, the head count reached 100, and I encouraged him to set a cut off. When it reached 120, I became alarmed, thinking it would be unmanageable, but Paul welcomed the news. The final attendance was 140 – and how wonderful that temple families enjoyed that last glorious Seder, before the temple burned to the ground on a cold and windy night at the end of the year.

For the rebuilding, Paul carefully prepared an inventory of every set of silverware, dishes, pots, pans, implements and cutlery for submission to the Kitchen Design Committee so that useful items — all of which he had personally handled — could be replaced.

THE RED MIXER

During one of our joint forays to Costco, we were impressed by a newly installed display of heavy-duty KitchenAid mixers, professional grade, in bright red. Paul had a gift for cooking intuitively, using whatever was available from the garden that day, combining ingredients by the pinch, chopping with speed and grace using the sharpest of knives, stirring up tasty sauces without following a recipe. When he shook a frying pan with a firm hand, the contents flew up a foot in the air and landed in formation, turned over exactly as he had intended — performance art in the kitchen.

Paul well understood that baking required specific and measured ingredients. He had taken a pastry and bread making course at the county vocational school years ago, planning to apply this knowledge for the community dinners at the synagogue. He felt ready to resume these interests now that he was semi-retired and closed the beauty salon early afternoons.

We unpacked the stunning red object of desire and installed it near an outlet on the kitchen counter.

Over the next year (2012), Paul didn’t get around to reading the instructions or switching it on. I attributed his seeming lack of interest to the distractions of our busy lives and was not especially concerned. Then, he showed signs of difficulty in handling other routine tasks, mostly in the garage or workshop.

When he was diagnosed with a fast-moving and untreatable dementia disease, I supported him in his efforts over a two year period to maintain his beauty salon, work in the vegetable garden, find his favorite television shows with the remote, lead a semblance of a normal life at home. Learning something new — how to operate the elegantly designed kitchen appliance — was no longer possible. We left it in place, too overwhelmed to think of moving it.

A few months after Paul died, I re-boxed the unused mixer in its original packaging and brought it back to Costco. Mercifully, their return policy is liberal, as I did not have it in me to advocate for my consumer rights on this sad errand. I don’t remember all the times I’ve cried for Paul, for his suffering, for his absence, for the loss of a dear and decent man. But I do remember the burning torrent of tears I shed, sitting in his truck in the parking lot after I left Costco that day, empty-handed and brokenhearted.

I grieved for my husband’s unfulfilled hopes of mastering the new machine and producing beautiful creations for us to appreciate — and at his lost opportunity to perform the loving, selfless, nurturing acts of service that satisfied him so deeply.

Sometimes, when I go into the kitchen for a late night snack, I am reminded of the mixer that occupied the corner shadows, then disappeared — and that not everything is possible in this life.

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Today I went to Costco alone, in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, when there are no more than a dozen customers scattered throughout the cavernous building.

Walking up and down the aisles, I notice the stacks of men’s jeans and plaid flannel shirts, the gigantic bags of mixed nuts and jars of pickled herring, the five-pound bunches of grapes and bubble-wrapped packs of four dozen batteries, the forty-pound bags of birdseed and imitation suede sectional couches, the plush car seat covers and gallon jugs of dishwashing liquid — all items worthy of Paul’s attention, inspection, and consideration.

I remember taking him here in the fall of 2013. His illness was progressing rapidly, but I didn’t quite grasp how fast. He hallucinated that we were at the registry of motor vehicles, confronting anyone in sight to help him get his license back. I didn’t take him there again.

I lean on the basket with my elbows and push it, meditatively. It is a journey I imagine my husband taking on his own many times before, filling a couple of midday hours with the freedom of exploration and discovery in a parallel universe where the diminutive humans coexist with the disproportionately large but familiar inanimate objects. Knowing Paul, the fact that he was a card-carrying “member” of this great wholesale club heightened his enjoyment.

This was his private adventure without a shopping list, way more exciting than a guided tour of a museum or a historic house, but not nearly as exciting as pushing boulders with the Kubota farm tractor or turning on the ignition of his eighteen foot Eastern fishing boat. Harbors, the backyard, the temple kitchen, Costco — these places where he habitually returned — revealed his extraordinary capacity to derive pleasure from practical pursuits.

After checking out at the register, he’d head to the Costco gas pumps to fill up the Tundra pickup and then drive straight home. He’d place the jar of herring filets on the kitchen counter, grab a fork from the silverware drawer, and claim his fine catch of the day.

Remembering Paul, I smile for his delight in that moment, and for mine in the memory of it.

APPLE HARVEST ON POND STREET, ESSEX (1992)