Shopping with your heart

Small kindnesses at the corner shop | celebrating Australian women who write

Autumn sunrise in Hobart, Tasmania

Small kindnesses at the corner shop

I’m baking a cake. Late at night, as mothers do, when the house is roughly asleep, and the oven light is warm and pleasing in the gathering dark.

The glow from the square double glass window is romantic, a little soporific — a candle burning low on a date night-in, the embers of a wood fire lulling a baby asleep on the breast. Now I sound like I’m falling in love with my oven. Domestic goddess that I am. I can hear you laughing, you know I can.

Earlier that day I’d read through the recipe. It’s a classic carrot cake from Tasmanian baker, Sally Wise.¹ A crowd favourite, moist and reliable, and it doesn’t contain bananas, my usual go to for a birthday celebration. No horrendous allergy stories here, just a younger brother who has an aversion to bananas — a phobia he developed as a kid and has carried with him all his life. Justified, perhaps, by his sailing fraternity because bananas are said to bring bad luck on a boat.²

Carrots, on the other hand, are symbols of health and love. And my fridge just so happens to be plentiful with the elongated root. Thanks to Sylvia, my youngest daughter, and her shopping habit — her small fingers slipping a few carrots into my African basket each time we visit the shop on the corner — sometimes twice a day.

Or five times, on a day like this, because the egg basket is empty and the other ingredients are waiting — the carrots blitzed in the food processor on the bench; the flour, sugar, and spices mixed in the stainless steel bowl; the oil and vanilla mingling in the glass jug.

My throat pinches with a rush of night-before-birthday nerves. Sylvia appears at the kitchen door, in her pink elephant pyjamas, as if awoken by my frequency of concern. She runs out to the back garden and checks the chicken pen for eggs, but there are none.

I glance at the time on the stove, 7.59pm. I throw my eyes to the kitchen window, where I can see the shop on the corner, the door is open and the lights are on. I might make it before it closes at 8.

Go Mum, Sylvia shouts, her lips pulled into a wide smile, her eyes pressing into mine, Run.

And I do. Rushing into the hallway and out the front door. My red sheepskin boots pounding the footpath, the ties of my fading-black apron flying behind me, my breath catching in my cheeks.

But I am too late. The sliding door is closing as I reach it and through the glass I can see the owner, Niko³, turning the lock. But he sees me, the whole frantic mess of me, standing at his door. His face softens into a smile. He pulls open the door.

Katie, what is it?, he says, in his familiar English-Greek lilt — a song I have learnt to love with my naive Australian ear.

I’ve run out of eggs and I’m cooking a birthday cake, I say. And his eyes become brighter, like they are filling with a sunrise. Come in, come in, he says.

Anytime, Katie, I am here 5am whatever you need, he adds, as I carry a dozen eggs to the counter.

*

And they have been here, for all of it.

Delivering the groceries I had ordered-over-the-phone to our front door when I was recovering from brain surgery. I would wait in the hallway leaning against the wall, counting the necessary coins from my fluorescent-yellow bumbag (yes I was stylish even in illness).

Years later carrying home a banana box of food for me as I held onto the collars of my three children, the fourth, blossoming in my belly. A kindness they have continued as my family has grown.

Joining the search for my missing son, that disastrous afternoon, when I collapsed in despair and all the while my son was asleep in his bed.⁴

It is a familiar story.

The milk bar, as the corner shop is affectionately called in Australia, popping up on our streets with the arrival of immigrant families in the 1930s. Selling the best-array of lollies and milk-shakes, yo-yos and magazines, and food from the owner’s far-away homes.

Many of you will have grown up near a family-run corner shop, spent your pocket money there, bought last minute ingredients for dinner and candles for a birthday cake, perhaps even worked in one, as I did when I was a teenager. A place where the everyday and the extraordinary converge — I remember that day I served Princess Mary and Prince Fredrick of Denmark at the local grocer on Hill Street.

What do you remember?

— the thrill of being able to walk to the shop alone for the first time?⁵

But as Annabel Crabb writes, the corner shop is a vanishing species.

Under attack from supermarkets with their ever expanding product range and opening hours. […] And those born in the 21st century, might wonder what a corner shop even is.

Perhaps one day they will watch the ABC television series, Back In Time For The Corner Shop, which explores the role of convenience stores in Australia, and understand a little of what has been lost.

*

Our shop on the corner is thriving.

And it’s not just luck, good management, or local support that has saved it from residential development. It’s a deep yearning for real-life connection and the things that we need, beyond convenience and nourishment.

Look carefully at your shopping list and you will see what your heart desires — conversation, belonging, trust — written in invisible ink.

*

Do you know how to share a bread stick the Greek way?, George⁶ asks me across the counter one afternoon. He holds the bread stick in his hands. Slice it in half length ways, drizzle with olive oil mixed with a little water, stack with sliced tomato and feta cheese, and a grating of pepper. He kisses his fingers, Perfect.

Last week a woman came up to me and said, I like your dress, your outfit, the stripy yellow and green socks with the Birkenstock sandals, the bright swirls of colour on your sleeves.

And I’m remembering the lines of a poem, Small Kindnesses⁷, by Danusha Laméris —

We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”

*

Inside the shop on the corner there is a space for you in this big wide world, a space where you can be someone. And if you watch carefully, pay attention to the small details, you will find the very things you are looking for.

*

A few weeks ago Niko told me that his wife was unwell. I had suspected it — her absence, her eyes cast down, the whiteness of her cheeks. But I wasn’t prepared. Water welled in my eyes and something collapsed — my heart? Niko rung the items on the register, weighed the nectarines and Lebanese cucumbers, placed it all inside my shopping basket. And I reached across the counter, placed my hand on his, gave it a gentle squeeze. And in that gesture was everything.

A few other wild and wonderful things

Shopping list
By Kristen Lang

I will need
all of you.

Celebrating Australian women and non-binary writers

The Stella Prize long list was announced on March 4th. It’s a major literary prize awarded annually to one outstanding book written by an Australian woman or non-binary writer. It is named after Australian writer Miles Franklin, whose full name was Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin.

I’ve dived into the long-list, check it out here, revisiting Tasmanian author Maggie Mackellar’s gorgeous memoir Graft — motherhood, family, and a year on the land, which I read last year and loved; and the poetry of Ali Cobby Eckerman in her verse novel, She is Earth. I’ve picked up a copy of Melbourne author

Kate Mildenhall

’s The Hummingbird Effect, an epic, kaleidoscopic story of four women connected across time and place by an invisible thread. I can’t wait to begin.

The short list will be announced tomorrow, on the 4th April, and the winner announced on the 2nd May.

While we wait for the news, which Stella will you read?

Reading and Writing

Here’s a snippet of what I have been up to —

Polishing a poem I wrote a little while ago about living with a brain tumour. It will be published in the May edition of Brain Tumour Alliance Australia’s (BTAA) magazine. I can’t wait to share it with you very soon.

I’m enjoying reading about cultivating hope in a time of climate change. I loved this article by Rebecca Solnit. Also this podcast, recommended by Lucinda of

Suburban Dreaming

. I am thinking about legacy and inheritance, about sorrow and loss, and hope and creativity. What kind of world do you want to gift your children?

After reading an article in the Monthly — Running out of Trouble by Grace Tame⁸ I have been thinking about running and how it is like meditating on the move, more to come. I loved Grace’s thoughts on running races — how they are about compassion and connection. How the meaning of compassion, after all, is to suffer together. And I liked this too —

Races are like parsnips: I’m yet to figure out what the point of them is, but I know they’re good for me, and after I’m finished I very quickly forget how much I dislike them.

Also filling out winter sport enrollment forms and working on some more tales of the Overland Track, coming soon.

What activities are keeping you out of trouble?

What have you been reading?

*

Wishing you small kindnesses —

waiting in the line at your local shop

Kate xx

1. Sally Wise OAM is a kitchen guru, author and presenter. Best known for her slot on ABC local radio in Hobart about preserves and jams. And of course her wonderful books, including A Year in a Bottle.

2. There are a few plausible reasons for this superstition — years ago many ill-fated ships were noted to have been carrying bananas; bananas release ethylene and cause other fruits and vegetables to ripen quickly; sometimes dangerous and unwanted animals and insects were found in banana cases on board.

3. not his real name.

4. You can read about this family escapade here —

5. Annabel Crab, From lollies and baked beans to internet cafes and selfie sticks — the long history of the Australian corner shop, ABC News, 7 March 2023

6. not his real name.

7. You can read the entire poem here.

8. Thanks Ingrid and Darien for sharing it with me.