Love Shopping

Once upon a time there was a hungry woman.
It didn’t worry her that she was hungry – she knew she wouldn’t be hungry forever and, in fact, learnt to adapt to her constant hunger.

Something she liked about being hungry was the dreams she had about when she was able to eat again.
Would the food sustain her?
Nurture her?
Would it surprise her?
If she didn’t feel like it right then, would it still be OK the next day?
Would it be good quality and keep?

The years went by until she knew it was almost time to eat again.
She told her friends that she was in the market for food.
Her friends gave her lots of advice and offered their leftovers but she already knew exactly what food she was looking for.
She saw a lot of food that looked good and she knew she could've tasted it at any time but it wasn’t the food she'd dreamed of.

After three years, almost to the day since she'd stopped eating, she thought she’d found her food.
She wasn’t surprised.
She'd dreamed of it so many times it already seemed familiar to her, as she suspected it would.
The food hadn’t matured yet but she wasn’t concerned.
She felt sure it was the food for her.
The woman went home quietly excited.
Her taste buds were in a frenzy.
She told a friend she thought she'd found her food but still she knew to wait.
She walked past her food many times.
How easy it would've been to reach out and take a small piece, but her dreams told her that she'd know the right time, without a doubt.

When she found that someone else had taken the food, she was crushed.
How could it have happened? Didn’t she know?

Then she realised she'd been taken over by how the food looked, ignoring her other four senses.

Back to shopping.

She had patience and discipline.
She had waited this long…


Labrador Journal Feb – March 2002