This Is Us
I Raised My Child in a Shopping Mall
I raised my child in a shopping mall.
Not the kind of my youth: An enclosed, 1980’s dark-floored cave with a Spencer’s and The Limited, Orange Julius and Chick-Fil-A; a constant fountain whooooooshing in the background.
No, this shopping mall is a modern, outdoor arrangement with a small fountain in which people throw pennies along with doomed and prophetic wishes. It has every conceivable type of food, a bookstore, Best Buy, Chuck E. Cheese and more boutiques and large brand names than anyone could ever shop in a day.
This all occurs to me as my now-19-year-old daughter, Isabel, gets ready to graduate from college. She was raised in a shopping mall, I think. I did it!
I often tell her that her life would be great fodder for a children’s book. Eloise-level fantasy. How many children, I ask, end up living in a shopping mall?
To be clear, we didn’t live in one of the stores. That would be both wonderful and ridiculous. We live just feet away, though, in a condo complex in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where we still live. The problem with this, I have often noted, is that when you live steps away from an ice cream store, cupcake shop and chocolate boutique, the temptation is to go there all the time. We did not do that and, instead, would often end…
