imaginary nuts

"Is this officially an in-joke now?"

She is 12 and a half, a newish arrival to the world to having a verbal password into a group.

"It is!" I confirm, as we giggle through the aisles in search of imaginary nuts. (You had to be there.) She is, I must admit, too often too wary when I speak in exclamations. That she can't always tell when my rants are serious is not a credit to me, her mother. The stories she will tell won't be flattering.

But this one,this is a keeper, an grocery list mishap turned in to "that one time when." It is, we agree, each for her own reasons, the best trip to the grocery store ever. She couldn't explain, wouldn't guess, exactly what it meant to me, but I think the eavesdropping grandma smiling down into her cart in the baking aisle could.