An Ode to My Mom—and Bed Bath & Beyond

How shopping connects me to the mother I lost 25 years ago.

Raising two daughters and approaching 50, I find myself feeling nostalgic at least a few times a day. In the car when I hear Wham! on the radio, or dropping my tween off at school and seeing all those ‘90s jeans, I feel the tingle of my former self, the freedom and ease of my childhood, far away from the busy, ever-shifting landscape of being a parent. I especially feel it when I’m shopping. 

I think about the stores that are now gone, Hot Topic, and my beloved Bed Bath & Beyond. Stores my mother and I used to love to go to together; those sliding doors that swooshed open, welcoming us in, the punch of candles smelling like a country store. 

My mother died nearly 25 years ago; almost half of my life. But the waves of missing her, most often when I’m with my kids, can still knock me sideways. These waves, a mixture of happiness and longing, can also morph into nostalgia—an ache for what was, what I miss. 

I can picture myself in the dressing room at the GAP, opening the door to let my mother in; her promptly sticking her cold hands (from holding our must-have icy Diet Cokes) into my pants, pulling the 1969 baggy jeans forward to check for fit. “Too big,” she’d say. Or, heading into Express where she’d hold up a pair of black pants and exclaim, “Look at these cute slacks!” Humiliating. 

We would walk the maze of a store together, considering gravy boats, magnifying mirrors, and that massage chair that we always dreamed about. These stores offered a place of connection, something we could agree on when I was an angsty teen. Sometimes we’d run out on a school night to pick up poster board or spend hours on a fall weekend looking for that just-right extra blanket.

Before college, we chose a comforter set and photo albums. I never told her how much I missed her spearmint kisses that first year away, or how lonely I was sitting in a cold cinder-block dorm when my homesick roommate moved out halfway through the first semester.

After her death when I was 25, living with her absence was a new kind of claustrophobia. There was not enough air to breathe, so I’d shop for dish towels or a can opener—a wash of nostalgia and a deep ache for her in the candle aisle. 

A clean fragrance still reminds me of my mother: the feeling of her holding me after a nightmare when I was little or how she could see exactly who I was when I was a confused teen. She smelled like safety. Her warmth, like laundry, her arms, my home. 

A few years after her death, when I was back on my feet, I’d find myself in Bed Bath & Beyond—there to buy Tupperware but leaving with four candles instead. I needed a piece of her in my house as a reminder that her flame was still burning. 

I eventually learned to shop the way she did: to ask, What did I really need? What is necessary? I can still see my mother, with her frosted hair and wool coat, quietly deciding on a piece of decor, looking for affordable charm, holding up framed prints in fluorescent lights, scrunching her nose—sharing with me an important life lesson: How to sort through the crap.

In my first North Carolina apartment, I got a mosaic-tiled hallway mirror at Bed Bath & Beyond, and later my husband-to-be and I used their fancy laser gun for our wedding registry. A few years after that, the white noise of all their fans was the perfect place to sip a hot coffee and walk while my newborn napped on my chest in a carrier. How I longed for my mother in those moments. 

She said it was wise to always have extra sheets on hand; that you should buy multiple scrub brushes for the toilet; and yes, she’d silently nod, always grab Junior Mints at the counter. While I disagree that bedding must match, I find myself following my mother’s lead on (many) throw pillows for the couch and coffee cake after shopping on the weekends. 

I’m also finding a new kind of joy in helping my girls decorate their rooms, with their favorite Studio McGee lamps and Amazon blankets—I love that they know what they like. But other parenting moments, make me pine for my mother. I so needed her when my youngest went through the terrible twos, and what I would have given for her advice when my oldest transitioned to middle school. My daughters starting to date? I feel fully unprepared without her. 

But shopping brings her closer to me. I recently bought a Pyrex measuring cup to bake with my girls. Making banana chocolate chip muffins with them on a Sunday afternoon is the closest thing I’ve felt to peace since my mother has been gone. 

I see now that shopping with her allowed me to ease into an adulthood without a mom; and that shopping on my own helped me become a mother without one. I learned to craft my own meaning of home.

Now, I prefer stores where I’m left alone, not Crate & Barrel, with someone sidling over and gently asking, “May I help you?” I can now help myself, and I hear my mother’s guidance and feel her care echoing through the walls.

I’ll always remember my little girls seeing the foot baths in Bed Bath & Beyond for the first time, or hearing their oohs and ahhs at the 15 rows of K-cups and “fancy” espresso machines. Now, when I shop with my kids, I can feel their excitement when they jump into the car to spend the money they’ve earned. In Sephora, they get excited about fruit-scented skincare, and are “dying” for boleros (I thought the tie? I was wrong).

I revel in their delight, knowing I’ve passed this on to them, through my mom. And I always make sure to grab some candy in the checkout aisle, or a travel mascara—something new, for old time’s sake.

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