Forgiveness in Aisle Seven
Adapted from “The Grocery Store Truce”—a story submitted to StoryCorp 2025.
They hadn’t planned to see each other that day. It had been a quiet, tense few weeks—the kind of silence that sits heavy even when you’re in separate houses. After months of painful discovery and halting conversations, their contact had settled into the basics: logistics, counseling schedules, and cautious updates about the kids.
But that Saturday, both of them ended up at the same grocery store.
He turned down the frozen food aisle at the same moment she did. They froze. Neither had prepared for this particular kind of ambush. There was no therapist, no script, no carefully chosen words. Just the two of them and the humming freezers full of waffles and vegetables.
He started to back away, but she stopped him. “You might as well grab what you came for.”
He reached for a box of waffles. She did too. It was the last one.
For the first time in months, they looked at each other and didn’t know whether to fight or laugh. Finally, she said, “Go ahead. You always liked the blueberry ones.”
He nodded. “You did too.”
She smiled, just barely, and picked up the plain kind instead.
They didn’t talk long. He asked how she’d been sleeping. She said, “Better.” He said he’d started cooking more, though his food “still needed work.” The small talk was stilted, but it was real.
Later, she told a friend, “It wasn’t a big moment. But it felt… normal. That’s what I missed most—normal.”
That small exchange in the grocery aisle didn’t fix anything. It didn’t erase the betrayal or make the past feel safe. But it did something almost as important: it reminded them both that they could share space again without bitterness filling all the air.
When people talk about forgiveness, they might picture it as a single, dramatic choice: a declaration, a reunion, a tearful conversation. But forgiveness often starts like this: quietly, incidentally, in the small spaces of everyday life.
It might come during a shared errand, or in a familiar joke that doesn’t sting anymore, or in the calm realization that your body doesn’t tense up when you see their car drive by. It doesn’t come in a shout; it comes in a whisper.
Do you have something to share? Tell us about it.
