That’s my daughter’s favorite phrase. Everything is “awkward” from her nearly eight year old perspective.

We shop at the Safeway and like many chains, they have a discount card that lures people in and promotes loyalty by tossing bones here and there in the form of special member promotions and discounts at the gas bar. Rob gave me Shelley’s card to use after we moved in with the assurance that we’d get it replaced later as it had her name on it.

It was a hectic time. Moving from Iowa to Alberta. Getting married. Unpacking and packing and enrolling Dee in school and applying for residency and now it’s nearly three years later and I am still shopping with Shelley’s card at the Safeway.

And I don’t think about it very often. Oh, sometimes when a clerk makes a scrunchy bunny face at the card and my credit card but thinks better of asking why the names don’t match before handing it back. On those occasions I think “oh yeah, the names don’t match” or “whew, dodge that awkward conversation”. Well, not so much “conversation” as painful monologue because there is no conversation after the words “yeah, that’s my husband’s late wife’s card”. Although there probably is quite the conversation after I’ve left.

Today there a woman was being trained on the register by a clerk I am familiar with who smiled her recognition as she bagged the groceries.

“Are you a new club member?” the trainee asked.

“Excuse me?” I replied. Because I forgot about the name thing.

“Your club card has a different name on it.”

And instead of saying oh … nothing … or agreeing or anything else than what I did, I said,

“Oh, that. It’s my husband’s late wife’s card. We just haven’t gotten around to changing it.”

Silence.

She hands the card back and looks at the other employee, the one I sorta know but who probably didn’t know this, and she is looking wide-eyed back.

Awkward.

Very, very awkward.