The Sacrament of 7-11 15 comments

By Caroline Langston

Like the President of the United States, my husband struggles to quit smoking. And so for the nine years (and counting) of my marriage, places to buy cigarettes have come to assume a rather large role in our lives—usually at the end of the day or when his resolve to abstain breaks down under the toll of the day’s stresses. Because the old lever-pull cigarette machines have just about vanished, well, that leaves gas stations and…7-11.

I probably never went into a 7-11 when I was a single woman, but since I’ve been married, the family pilgrimage to 7-11 has become an almost daily event. It started with cigarettes, but quickly, we experienced mission creep: We used to live in Virginia, where you can buy beer and wine at convenience stores, and so the journey to 7-11 became a requisite pre-dinner-party or Friday-night- after-work destination. (They even had Sam Adams and Kendall Jackson.) Then we had a baby, and because we’re not the Costco sort, we were always running out to buy tiny, overpriced packages of diapers or wipes.

However convenient 7-11 might be, though, the chain of stores is at the nexus of several cultural hot buttons that go beyond the fact that doing most of one’s shopping there (as mi esposo and I have occasionally been known to do) is hopelessly infra dig:

1) No fruits and vegetables —To speak of, anyway (although there generally is a basket of browning, over-ripe bananas next to the cash register, for sale at some exorbitant price like $1.00 each). If this is not remarkable to you, then you haven’t been paying attention to the numerous public service announcements about the health benefits of eating a “colorful” diet to prevent diabetes and cancer, or the hand-wringing assessments about the lack of availability of vegetables in inner-city neighborhoods.

2) Wasteful packaging and production — Entombed in plastic, diced into expensive single-size servings, shipped from China and loaded with chemicals, the problems with 7-11 food go far beyond the mere absence of fiber and chlorophyll. Even the “brown” food—donuts, chicken nuggets, honey-roasted peanuts—has something wrong with it.

3) Vice — Penthouse behind the counter, cigarettes, beer and Mike’s Hard Lemonade (though not in Maryland!), giant boobs on the Maxim cover models, lottery tickets, 750 calorie cinnamon rolls, and that’s just the beginning. Fun for some, but not fun for parents of inquisitive five year old boys.

4) Crime—For most of my marriage, my husband has gone to 7-11 on his way to work at 3:00 a.m. Only recently have I been able to talk him into making coffee at home so as to avoid the inevitable gunman.

And yet, how can I begin to describe the fondness I have for 7-11 and its role in our family? Five years ago, my husband and I bought a house in an ex-working class neighborhood on the edge of an industrial park that was miles from any yuppie grocery shopping, and perhaps even more challenging, any decent restaurants. But there was one lone 7-11.

Thus, 7-11 became an even more integral part of our lives, and as we learned, was a central focus of community lore: one couple I know, who have three children and live next door to the wife’s parents, confessed to having regular “dates” at 7-11 while the children were at their grandparents. I once ran into Friend #1 buying cigarettes for Friend #2 on a weekday morning to take to playgroup, because Friend #2 had run out.

My husband has brought me scalding hot paper cups of decaf coffee as a make-up gift after arguments. And while it’s not my proudest parenting revelation, I can’t count the number of nights where we’ve dashed in and bought a DiGiorno frozen pizza for dinner at 7:53 p.m.

Since we’ve lived in our neighborhood here in Maryland, we’ve also become attached to the regular staff that works at our local 7-11—all immigrants, mostly from the Caribbean and Africa. The team is headed by manager Dawit, a father of four boys and like me, an Orthodox Christian, although he is from Ethiopia. The rhythm of church seasons and feasts is punctuated with our greetings and inquiries to each other, and each spring, as the long tough Lent passes and Easter nears, our excitement at the coming celebration. He is kind to our son and never fails to encourage me about how to raise a good and moral son in this day and age.

He’s accompanied by so many others: fellow moms who cluck over the baby, young single men who wipe down the stainless steel coffee table until it is gleaming. When my daughter was baptized, one staff member drove halfway across town, on her day off, wearing her Sunday best and carrying a present in tow, to join the party.

I’ve still got my bohemian bona-fides, sure: organic milk in glass bottles is delivered to my house weekly from a farm here in Maryland. I don’t allow soda into my house. And despite my Di Giorno lapses, I still believe in the virtues of Wendell Berry, small communities, and local agriculture.

Yet I’ve also seen that that sense of naturally-evolving community that so many long for can exist in the unlikeliest places—even at 7-11. That a plastic cup of Maruchan noodles, loaded with fat, preservatives, and salt, can be an occasion of shared hospitality, and spiritual meaning, as much as anything else. That kind hearts and common purpose can flourish, under the fluorescent lights and the sign noting that Manager Does Not Have Key to Safe.

It’s what Elizabeth Bishop noted in her great poem “Filling Station”: Somebody loves us all.