Diaper Shopping

Our shul has a program that runs every year between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur. On Rosh HaShanah, you’re given a few paper shopping bags as you exit services. On Yom Kippur, you bring them back––filled––and the non-perishable food is taken over to a food bank we work with. Simple. Easy. It has always been part of that space between the two holidays.

The shul provides a shopping list stapled to the bag, and we fill it. Josh and I walk the line every year: fill the bag without ripping the bag. We’ve gotten it down to a science of balancing the weight of cans vs. boxes.

But this year, as we took the bags, the people passing them out told us the food bank was most in need of three things: diapers, formula, and baby food. She pointed to a box of example teething biscuits on the table. “Like this,” she said.

“So we’ll get diapers this year,” I told Josh. It will make things easier. Packs of diapers are lighter than canned vegetables. You can fill the bag to the top without ripping it, even if you fill the bag with multiple packs of diapers in various sizes. Baby food in those squeezable bags is pretty light.

And yet. It’s hard to step in that aisle. I usually avoid it at the food store unless I’m buying something for someone else. I will walk the extra aisle and walk past aluminum foil or dog food rather than walk past a wall of diapers or boxes with pictures of smiling babies.

I want to be helpful, and I hate the idea of waste––giving the food bank something they don’t actually need or want vs. something they clearly do. So I’ll go into the aisle this weekend when we’re doing our normal food shopping for the week; tuck the diapers and formula towards the bottom of the basket. Place them inside the bags when we get home and fold the top over so we don’t have to see it again while we’re waiting to take them over on Yom Kippur. I’ll pretend that it doesn’t bother me, that it’s just like shopping for green beans. Except it’s not.

You get it.