“Do you need anything from Trader Joe’s?” my neighbor asked. “I can pick it up for you, or you can come with me.”

Suddenly, my spirits lifted like I had been offered an ice cream cone on a hot summer day. My answer was yes, oh yes. I didn’t need anything from the market. What I needed was a sense of normal.

Pushing my basket through the aisles at TJ’s was something I once did often. Since being displaced from my home a month ago, circumstances dictated that most of my grocery shopping had been done by phone and delivered. No opportunity to test if an avocado was ready to eat or to be tempted by two-bite brownies.

It didn’t take long to learn that I was not the only one seeking a sense of normal.

“I don’t know if life will ever be normal again,” the woman in front of me responded to the young man bagging her groceries, in response to his cheerful, “How are you today?”

It was hard to tell her age as we are all looking worn around the edges lately. A young girl was hanging onto the side of her mother’s cart, a child who would normally have been at school had her school, as well as her home, not been destroyed in the fire.

“She is missing her sense of routine, “ the mother told the young man carefully placing a carton of eggs in a separate bag.

As she spoke, I noticed that her daughter’s hair was shiny clean and braided into two perfect pigtails tied with red ribbons. In the midst of chaos, her mother, had created a sense of normal by continuing what I assumed was a routine morning ritual.I was wishing I could invite them to my house to have a tea party for the little girl with the pigtails tied in red.

One of my mother’s many Jewish superstitions was that red ribbons keep the evil eye away. I had red ribbons tied on everything from my daughter’s crib to her bed in her college dorm.

As I watched the little girl take her mother’s hand as she walked out of the store, pigtails bouncing, I could only hope the red ribbons would help them find normal again.

Email Patricia [email protected]. Visit her website at patriciabunin.com

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