Skyr.is

A trip to Whole Foods can bring out the worst in me. It is almost always crowded and impossible to stand for more than a minute without getting jostled. The lines are long. The walk home is short but nonetheless unpleasant, weighed down by groceries as I am.

To give Whole Foods credit, the selection is excellent. The staff is cheery and helpful. When the Whole Foods in Union Square first opened I was thrilled, having only, up until that point, been able to enjoy the Whole Foods experience on trips to LA.

But this is New York, a place where even a trip down the glistening aisles of a health food megamart can take on a whole new meaning.

Last night was a rainy Sunday and one in which I returned late from a weekend away. I had to pick up a few staples for the week to come. Expecting the worst, I headed out the door.

Perhaps because of the rain Whole Foods was not as crowded as I feared it would be. I relaxed and started to enjoy picking out food: tomatoes from Long Island, dried mango slices, bottled water from Europe.

And then, something beautiful happened. I had just entered dairy when I saw a young woman standing and staring at the yogurt selection with a look of unadulterated joy on her face.

“Yesssss,” she was saying to herself.

She bobbed up and down as she stood in place. She davened.

I looked closer, expecting an ipod or cell phone to be fixed in her ear. There was none. I looked around, assuming she must have been with a companion. I saw that she was alone.

“What’s up?” I asked her.

“They have it!” she exclaimed.

“They have what?”

She pointed to a small round carton on the refrigerated shelf in front of her.

“Skyr!” she said, “I used to have it every day in Iceland. I’ve been looking for it for months in the city and up until now no one carried it.”

“What it is?”

“It’s like a cross between cheese and yogurt.”

She had yet to put any skry in her basket. She just stood there and grinned at it. I wondered if she was nervous about touching it, afraid that if she did it might crumble to dust or turn out to be some kind of desert mirage. I did the honors.

“That good, eh?” I said examining the container.

“Oh yes,” she said.

As I walked away I questioned if in fact it was the skyr that was making this woman so happy, or the memory of who she ate it with and what she was doing with her life when she ate it. Then I realized it didn’t matter. What mattered was that she was feeling that way on a rainy Sunday night in a Whole Foods in Manhattan.

I walked home with two heavy bags of groceries in hand and a spring in my step. In my building a guy got into the elevator with me. He was lugging a weekend bag and the weary, stressed look of someone returning from a getaway and preparing to face the week ahead. It was a look I had not more than an hour ago.

“Hamptons or business?” I asked.

He looked surprised. What are you bugging me for on a rainy Sunday night, girlfriend? I could hear it in his eyes. Bear me with me, baby, I thought. And then, he did. He loosened up and smiled.

“Neither, actually. Niagara Falls for a wedding.”

“Oh cool. Ever seen Niagara?”

We chatted until we reached my floor and when I got out it was strangest thing. I turned and smiled and I swear to god as he grinned back I could see skyr in his eyes.