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Left Blue

 I have shopped at the local Asian grocery store sporadically for two decades now. On my recent trip which came about for the first time since the pandemic started, I noticed a lot of change and not in the ways I might have imagined. The owner is a woman maybe in her early 60s. The whole family works in the store. She is still a fixture running one of the registers as she always did. 

The surrounding cast of characters is completely different. There used to be a couple of kids a bit older than J that came around to work at the store after school. Looks like they have moved on to other things now they are in their mid-20s. The owner always had perfect hair, pretty jewelry and fashionable clothes. She rarely talked to any of her customers and I can't recall ever seeing her smile. But if you struck up a conversation with her, she would be pleasant enough. 

It is no surprise that everything is a lot more expensive than it used to be. The fish stand was not well-stocked and what little they had did not look appetizing. The mix of customers at the store felt quite different from what I had been used to seeing on my trips here. A lot of folks shuffling around the aisles cluelessly much like me. A certain sadness permeated the air even as everyone carried on as before. The social distancing signage remains but no one cares to follow them anymore. But it serves as a reminder to the last couple of years we've been through. Maybe that blue feeling has lingered on in this store more than the others - the owner is a pale shadow of her former self. Her hair is a short, choppy bob - not quite the perfect coif she used to have, she wears dark sweatpants and an oversize sweater, the jewelry is largely gone.

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