It’s Shocking How Sad the Closing of a Chain Store Can Make People. People Like Me.
Word spread quickly in my neighborhood one morning a few weeks ago. Phones in a certain corner of Astoria, Queens, buzzed with frantic group-chat messages. Pictures were shared on Instagram. Facebook posts about the news elicited crying emoji responses. We couldn’t hide our gut-level shock. I felt blindsided by sadness—mostly, I thought, on behalf of my younger daughter.
Nobody tell Vivian, I wrote in one group chat, referring to my 12-year-old. (I’ve changed her name.) I was thinking of her, a friend responded. It’s like a death, I wrote next. A friend responded with a “haha,” but I realized I wasn’t laughing.
Our local Walgreens was closing. There was a sign on the door stating as much, and yet we didn’t want to believe it. Are you sure it’s not being renovated? Are you sure it’s not just the pharmacy?
I Googled. I found headlines about hundreds of locations being shuttered. The sadness I felt was very much my own.
If there had been a TV show called Growing Up Walgreens, our family could have been the core cast, and Vivian would be the precocious child star at the center of all the hijinks. Imagine a pilot episode, “Tantrum in the Toy Department,” in which a young Vivian finds a super cute Beanie Baby in the toy section and refuses to leave the store unless her beleaguered mother buys it for her. (Oh no! Mom forgot her wallet!) In another episode, the intrepid young Vivian simply can’t decide between the Mandalorian valentines and the Powerpuff Girls ones and, well, it’s closing time, kid. Make up your mind or come back tomorrow! Imagine, if you will, the controversial did-they-jump-the-shark episode—Season 32, Episode 277—in which Vivian, now entering puberty, presses the button on the shelf to trigger a recorded voice: Customer assistance needed in the deodorant department! And then waits, in a nod to Beckett, for the duration of the episode, for assistance that never comes.
The point is, Vivian loves the Walgreens around the corner from our house—so much so that a lot of people in our lives know this to be true. In preschool, she gave her teacher some thoughtfully selected, but very sad, item from a seasonal aisle—perhaps a #1 Teacher mug? Her teacher said, surely sarcastically, “Where ever did you get it?” Vivian responded, proudly, “Walgreens. We get everything there!”
This is, of course, not true, but also entirely true. We do not get everything at Walgreens—who could?—but historically, as a family, it’s true that we’ve been going there an awful lot. For 16 years.
I’m to blame. I’m the mother! I probably took Vivian to Walgreens too often when she was in a stroller. On days when I wasn’t working, I’d wander the aisles for lack of anything else to do—grabbing extra baby food, or diapers, or whatever else we needed, or didn’t. From an early age Vivian was no doubt dazzled by the buzzing florescent lights, the canned music of the bulky greeting cards that play a tune when opened, the dulcet tones of elderly people complaining at the pharmacy—what-do-you-mean-I-have-to-come-back-later-I’m-here-now.
Our Walgreens location—our beloved store #1180—in addition to being right around the corner from our house, happens also to be between home and our nearest playground. So if there was still a lot of time to kill before dinner after we’d wrapped things up at the park, the store was a place to while away another sanity-saving 10 or 15 minutes, whatever the season. Because it was the seasonal aisle where my children spent most of their time. And luckily, at Walgreens there is a season—often more than one—happening all the time.
There were stocking stuffers, like jingle-bell scrunchies and peppermint lip balms, to gather for everyone on our Christmas lists. There were cardboard pumpkin decorations and the cheap fake spiderwebs we wrapped around our stoop railings each year. There were plush bunnies and chicks and eggs; shamrock beads and leprechauns. Always, always, there was whatever candy the season required.
I swear there was a period of time that lasted about five years when at least once a week, Vivian would ask, after dinner, “Can somebody take me to Walgreens?” Sometimes she actually needed something (lip balm, glitter glue, 100 Q-tips for a 100th Day of School project); sometimes she didn’t. Sometimes our family needed something (like one year, when Vivian was not her best self, poster board and star stickers for a behavior chart); sometimes we didn’t. But walking over to Walgreens was something to do, at any rate, and it was better than sitting around listening to Vivian complain that we wouldn’t take her there. Usually one or the other of us had a prescription waiting to be picked up, anyway.
And then one day, on her 9th birthday, Vivian was gifted her first Squishmallow—purchased by neighborhood friends who’d picked it up at Walgreens on their way to our house to celebrate. Vivian had been admiring these adorable, soft creature-pillows in the store for a while by then, so was completely delighted. But a few days later, we were sent into COVID lockdown, and there was no more Walgreens for any of us for a good long while.
We found new amusements, new ways to cope—and that’s how Vivian discovered a community of Squishmallow lovers online. So when the lockdown loosened, she asked to go Squishmallow hunting—it’s a thing! I am not making it up! We eased back into the world and went to Walgreens just to see what Squishmallows they had. And then, after a while—it only made sense—there were seasonal Squishmallows, and we bought them, because they gave us some small joy.
Years passed again and somehow Vivian, age 11, started asking to go to Walgreens alone with friends—now on the hunt mostly for makeup and candy. We said yes. These days, when she wants or even needs something there—she’s almost 13—she can just waltz on over. At least she could until Wednesday, the day our branch closed.
Our Walgreens has—like my children, like me—aged during these past 16 years that we’ve spent together, and it was never a particularly nice store to begin with; she’s the old dame of the neighborhood, and not even a classy one. Some changes we witnessed along the way were welcome (Krispy Kremes by the register); others not so much (all the locked-up stuff). One time last year, Vivian and her father saw a man sweep armfuls of stuff off shelves and into bags and then just walk out. So I guess that explains the locks, but having to wait for items to be unlocked certainly alters the vibe of the store, the experience of shopping there.
I won’t miss that.
But I’ll miss the security of knowing Walgreens was right there. For when Vivian was bored, sure, but also when she or her sister spiked a fever and the thermometer we’d bought at Walgreens a year before needed a new battery. For when the kids had pinkeye or the flu and the prescriptions needed to be picked up as soon as was humanly possible. Or when a lice letter came home from school and we needed RID and Pantene, stat.
That dumpy Walgreens has mostly been a place of frivolity and convenience for our family, but it has also been a source of comfort. A place for distractions like bath bombs and Cadbury Eggs, sure, but also COVID tests and vaccines. A place for Chia Pets and balloons on sticks, but also for Hibiclens, a specialized antibacterial soap I needed before surgery, and for the medication I’ve been taking these past five years to keep my cancer from coming back.
It was a full week after I’d heard the news about our Walgreens closing that I realized I had to tell Vivian. I’d been avoiding it. But she’d asked me over breakfast to remind her to go buy an anti-frizz hair serum after school, so I knew she would see the sign on the door. I guess I wanted to soften the blow. On the walk to school, I said, “I have news you’re not going to like.”
“What?” she asked skeptically, like she was prepared to be unimpressed.
“Our Walgreens is closing in a few weeks.”
“What?” she said, and she stopped and stomped on the sidewalk. “No.”
“I know,” I commiserated.
“No,” she said. “No, no, no.” Like if she said that enough times, it might not be true.
“Are you sure it’s not being renovated?” she asked.
“I’m sure.” We continued walking as she processed.
“They’re not just, like, closing the pharmacy part?”
“I’m sorry. No.”
We walked a few more moments and I wondered if she had any of the same thoughts I’d been having since hearing the news. I said, “It’s sort of like you grew up there.”
“Well, not really,” she said. “But I know what you mean.”
We approached the corner where I usually leave her to walk the rest of the way to school on her own, and before crossing the street, she said, “At least there’s a Duane Reade a few blocks away.”
I watched her go.
My Walgreens child was all grown up … and just in time.
