Good bye, Sweet Garden.

I need peppermint tea and dark chocolate. Actually, I need vodka, thanks to “a very Beautiful thing called Tariffs” but Garden of Eden doesn’t sell that. As I round the corner, I see Joseph - the man who stands near my local market most days. I can tell it’s him because of the way he rocks back and forth. I hand him some money and his thank you, as always, is sincere, because Joseph is a gracious man. I ask if he wants anything and he says maybe something hot. He likes Garden of Eden’s macaroni and cheese.

I get closer to the store and am stopped cold by a sign on the sidewalk.

I don’t want 20% off of everything! I want to keep overpaying at the store I love!

Cartoonishly, my brows shoot up and my mouth falls open as I stare at the words, trying to divine another meaning. Maybe it’s just a case of poor wording - could they just be having a sale on deli meats?

Once inside, I’m stopped again, this time with a thud of forced acceptance. Shelves are being cleared and boxes, packed. A sign in the dried fruit section makes it official.

I look around helplessly. 26 years. I’ve been here for 25 of them. Garden of Eden has one of the few double doors in the neighborhood - and if you push a double stroller, you appreciate stores with wide doors. I loved gliding in, but the luxury of not having to bang my way through a narrow door wasn’t all that drew me.

Garden of Eden isn’t a supermarket. It’s a market. Its ceiling is hung with baskets. The guy who tends the flowers will go to the back and check if there are fresher tulips if he knows you.

Here, the produce sits in wicker baskets, not glass cases. Tissue-paper-wrapped apples are lined up like beauty queens, waiting, but not begging, to be chosen. The apples, I think, have a well-earned sense of entitlement, and take up more space than the other fruits for a reason. Sure, peaches are pretty, but they bruise easily and only last a few months. Same with plums and nectarines. “Let them have summer,” the apples exude. “We run this place.”

The Garden of Eden OG’s (plus pears.)

I sigh loudly and wonder what I can buy, aside from tea and chocolate. The store manager walks toward me, carrying a large box.

“I can’t believe you guys are leaving,” I say. I’ve always found him handsome, and dignified.

“You’ve been here the whole time,” he says, and I feel undeservedly proud.

“I love this place,” I answer quietly, and more quietly still, he thanks me for having been a good customer.

I’d answer but I can’t get words out and I’m embarrassed at how choked up I am.

I approach the citrus section, and, like Dorothy to the Scarecrow, want to whisper to the lemons and limes that I’ll miss them the most. Wheeling my twins’ stroller up to these baskets was always the first thing I did after entering the store.

“Ok. Ava, today, you choose a lemon, and Ben, you get a lime,” I’d say. They’d lean down from the stroller to pluck their yellow and green prizes as if the citrus baskets were kept on the floor just for them.

As we wheeled down the pasta aisle, I’d say “switch” and laughingly, they’d hand each other their fruits. A few minutes later, noticing their restlessness as I tried to remember if I needed dark or light brown sugar, I’d say “switch” again, to their ridiculous delight. I loved that it worked, but worried that my adorable kids might be simple. But then again, who was the one who couldn’t remember an ingredient from a recipe she’d studied only five minutes ago?

I walk toward the back of the store, where the dairy shelves are empty. The handsome manager packs bags of pretzels into a box. I’ve come here the day before every party we’ve ever had to pick out new things - because, as everyone in the neighborhood knows, Garden of Eden has great snacks. Here, I discovered the extra-dark pretzels Ben loves. And the honey-goat cheese Ava used to adore. And boxes of rosemary flatbread and extra long, crispy bread sticks no other store had. Garden of Eden has always been open on Thanksgiving morning and New Year’s Day, and Ben has been sent here many a time, with urgent orders to get “fancy crackers and an extra thing of humus and whatever else looks good.”

I walk past the frozen section, not looking at the hors d’oeuvres, because if I do, I’ll cry for real. I picture myself staring at the flat white boxes filled with pigs in blankets and mini quiches, trying to pick something new and special - something to make my mother want to eat during her last year alive.

I’ve called my friend Tammy from these aisles, to ask if there’s a difference between chicken stock and chicken broth and to say things like “I know this is idiotic, but 32 ounces is a quart, right? Just tell me.” She knew as well as me that I could have asked google those kinds of things, but I liked asking her. Mainly because it would propel her to ask what I was making and she’d give me the unsolicited advice that made all the difference - “Bake it for 5 minutes less than the recipe says” or “I always add nutmeg to that cake - just a few grindings. See if they have it.” They always did.

I go to the deli counter, not because I need anything but because I like the man who works there. I order turkey breast and he turns to the slicer. There’s a handmade card on the counter - a pencil drawing of what I think is a smiling face but might be a shark. Inside, in wobbly, childish writing, it says “I like that you wer here.”

He turns to hand me the neat little packet and I’m struck at how much I too, like that he was here.

“I’m going to miss you,” I say and he smiles.

“You’ve been here as long as me,” he says.

I think of the time I was in a pastrami phase and he’d dangle a slice over the counter, it’s black peppery coating making my fingers deliciously messy as I plucked it and groaned at its salty perfection while he sliced more.

This man has had his back to me more often than his front, but in a way, we know each other.

I ask if he has a new job lined up and he shrugs and says maybe.

At the register, I sigh and shake my head in commiseration with the cashiers. They’re not the same ones who used to come from behind the register to crouch at the stroller and coo at my babies, but I’ve seen them in action with plenty a baby. These women can coo with the best of them.

I meet eyes with the cashier I know best. She’s very pretty and the only time I didn’t see her smile was during the pandemic, when our masks kept us from seeing each other do much of anything.

The first day that I dared to venture out, masked in a bandana like a Halloween bandit, I was flooded with relief to see the glow of light coming from the market. My market. I bought what I needed quickly, thanking the masked and gloved heroes who, unlike me, didn’t have the luxury of working from home.

They were there. Day in. Day out.

Before nor’easters, when ingredients for spaghetti and meatballs made the difference between a perfect snow day and an ok one. On rainy days, when we needed popcorn, brown sugar and chocolate chips so we could watch movies and bake. And in the days just after 9/11, when we needed anything and everything that felt familiar and comforting.

“You’ve been here for this neighborhood,” I say to the pretty cashier, and ask what she’ll do. She has another part-time job at Gristedes and hopes she can get more hours there.

Gristedes is a New York grocery too, but there are lots of them. There are only two Garden of Eden’s. Now, one.

I ask when the final day will be and she says Sunday.

“Is it weird if I come every day ‘til then?” I ask.

“No!” she says with a laugh. “Come!”

I will.

I’ll go today, to get a few extra things for Passover.

And tomorrow, for the gluten-free crackers my neighbor Patti loves.

And the day after, to say goodbye.

To a place that’s always been there. A place I depended on. And took for granted.

And loved.

Goodbye, dear friend.

I’ll miss you.