The day I decided to run
Some people follow the stock market. I keep an eye on the cucumbers.
No ticker, no analysts, no arrows. Just a humble green vegetable I have bought my entire adult life. It's my gauge for the economy, and it has never once tried to spin me.
It started at my mother's table. I was raised by a kindergarten-teacher mom and a police-officer dad. When they divorced, I was one of the statistics — two people I love, and a kitchen that knew how to make a little go a long way. Dinner was often chicken and stars soup with cucumbers on the side. Why cucumbers? Because they were green. In her book, green meant good for me, and that settled it.
Years later, when I was the one raising my children on my own, guess what landed on their plates? Cucumbers. Some families pass down china. Mine passed down a vegetable. Today, my children's needs are met. I am grateful for that. Being able to provide now does not erase the memory of how this started, or the habit of noticing a price.
Then the price of cucumbers went up to where I had to pause and decide whether I was going to buy them. A familiar thing, and suddenly it required a decision. If I was stopping to think about a cucumber, what decisions were other people having to make? That pause stayed with me. It helped turn wanting things to be better into deciding to do something about it.
Affordability is my number one priority because the cost of living is not an idea on a screen. It is a decision in a store — for a parent raising children alone, someone working two jobs, a neighbor whose retirement no longer covers the bills. I want District 86 to work for every one of those lives, with dignity.
If that pause has been yours too, I want to hear about it. The Cucumber Index is just below — an honest look at what official numbers say everyday costs are doing. It will not replace a conversation with you. But it is a place to start.
