Sak's

Sak's Fine Foods is one of several convenience stores within a five minute walk from my apartment. Over the last year and change I've tried to distribute my business evenly to all of them, not wanting to choose a favorite and feel guilty about the others. After Oliver left town though, and I lost the energy to go to a grocery store and buy actual food products to make actual meals, I found myself in Sak's more and more. I bought all your typical don't-feel-like-cooking foods: cereal, pasta sauce, the occasional late-night package of cookies (it's a 24-hour store, after all).

In the process, I've become attached to Nas, the clerk behind the counter. Nas saved boxes for me when I was packing up all my possessions. He asked how Oliver's going-away party had gone. Nas humored me while I blathered on and on about the greatness of Porter Airlines, and chatted about the crazy times he'd had during his own visits to New York. While waiting in line to buy a box of Froot Loops, I once saw Nas offer $100 to a customer if he could consume the products he was buying (a carton of Tropicana orange juice and a large bag of potato chips) in 20 minutes. The customer declined, but only after weighing the offer for a few minutes. It was a win-win in the end anyhow, because the two men seemed to have bonded a little over the experience and exchanged one of those handshake/high five things. Nas offered to help me kill the ants and spiders that had overtaken my apartment.

Maybe my mind won't let me think about the hardest things to leave behind. Instead of thinking about good friends who will soon become pen pals, I'm thinking about Sak's and Nas.

Maybe though, the little things are just as hard to say goodbye to. Maybe, in their own way, they add as much to your life as the big things. A life needs details just as much as it needs big plot lines.