I’m getting to that age when I find myself scanning obituaries and realizing that the list of people I know is longer than those I don’t. But, as it turns out, the obituary column isn’t the only place I become keenly aware of the absence of familiar faces. My regular visits to the military grocery store—the commissary—seem to bring people’s absence into sharper focus.
I’ve been shopping at the Annapolis Navy Commissary for over 60 years. The place has undergone several remodels and relocations—moving from the original Quonset hut on the Naval Station to the modern building it occupies today—but it’s the people I remember. If you’d told me, back when it was housed in a Quonset hut on the Naval Station, that I’d still be doing the same thing decades later, I might have laughed. But here I am, still walking those aisles, sometimes pushing a second cart—just like I did when I was a child, tagging along with my mom.
We were so connected to the commissary that when I started planning my wedding, I asked my mom whether we should invite any of Dad’s navy friends. She gave me a casual answer: “I don’t care who you invite, Mary.”
Without missing a beat, I shot back, “If you don’t care, then why is there an entire table of baggers from the commissary coming to the wedding?” It made me laugh, but it also made me realize where my mom’s true allegiance lay: with the people of the commissary who had bagged untold numbers of groceries for our family.
Fast forward to 2000, when my husband and I moved back to Annapolis and bought my parents’ house—a five-minute drive from the very same commissary. We continued to spend a large chunk of our budget there. Often, my mom would still join us for grocery runs, though now it was her granddaughters who walked beside her down the aisles.
It’s funny how the simple act of grocery shopping can reveal so much about life, about change. It reminds me of that old song: “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone?”
Over the years, I’ve run into people I’ve known since grade school and later through college. It’s a beautiful life, attending an academy that sends people to the world’s farthest corners—only for many of them to find their way back to Annapolis, often ending up at the commissary.
It’s not just classmates I bump into but also the parents of my friends and the long-gone friends of my parents. Generations of Quinns, Bradys, Inmans, and Shanleys. Teachers from my school days and now, teachers from my students’ lives. Friends from church. Fellow alumni. And more often than not, these encounters aren’t just a passing glance. We stop, park our carts to the side, and engage in impromptu visits—those conversations that take you back and catch you up on family, health, and life. It’s not unusual to see pairs of people catching up at the commissary as if time has slowed down just for a moment.
Some days, it feels like the past never really leaves; it just shifts, like shadows, into new forms. And now, there’s a new generation in my family as my children shop in the commissary. The people may come and go, and I miss those gone but something about the place—the commissary’s steady rhythm and familiar faces— keeps it all close.
A helpful reminder. Thank you Mary!
So glad for the time Rusty and I ran into you at the commissary! A wonderful exchange as I remember! My mother has shopped there from the time I was in 4th grade. That place still means so much to her— so many friends were there.
I don’t know if I could write down every time I ran into friends there! But yes, I remember our conversation in the aisles there! Thanks Lani for recalling!