I stood in Soviet breadlines as a kid. The pandemic has unleashed my long-forgotten fear of scarcity.

We lived in a two-room flat inside a nine-story apartment building. Whenever we heard that the store down the street got a shipment of something we wanted—herring, socks—my mom would drop whatever she was doing to stand in line for as long as three hours, ration booklet in hand. I stood in lines, wearing my leopard-printed shuba, or fur coat, and my bunny-fur hat with snowball-sized pom-poms, looking down on the gray concrete floors in perpetual boredom. Occasionally, the sight of something useless, like a small display of white collars that were sewn on to the itchy brown-and-black Soviet school uniforms, distracted me from the wait.   

One time, my mom traded a vodka ration ticket for two bath towels. Another time, we waited close to an hour for 400 grams of butter, roughly 3 ½ sticks—it was distributed 200 grams per person, and my petite hands qualified to get our family double. 

Prior to the pandemic, the amusement park-like atmosphere of American grocery stores—with their endless variety, well-stocked shelves, and plentiful free samples—practically wiped my memory of shortages. Thirty years later, I am pretty sure I won’t have to trade vodka coupons for a box of mac and cheese. But standing in long grocery store lines again has released my long forgotten fear of scarcity. 

When I’m finally allowed to enter the store, I feel like a lab rat released into a labyrinth, hunting for simple things like bread and butter. These morsels of sustenance aren’t just about food: I’ve realized how much I’ve come to rely, psychologically, on routinely filling my cart with certain staples. Few weeks ago, when I saw all of the butter had sold out, I had an emotional hiccup—my pulse quickening as I stared into the vacant space where packs of butter should have been. Intellectually, I knew this was probably a fluke—likely a blip brought about by the sudden surge of quarantine baking efforts. And yet my body tensed up, and my thoughts trailed into “what if” scenarios. Now, I buy at least two packages of unsalted butter packs every time I shop—no matter that my freezer is accumulating a small trove of butter sticks. 

I am not trying to equate my current circumstances with what my parents went through. Even with the temporary shortages across the country, I know that personally I am in no real danger of going without. Even then, we rarely went without. Despite the excruciating lines and lackluster grocery store displays, I have no memory of hunger. We always had food on the table—as we do now. 

And yet the appearance of scarcity has awakened a part of me that I thought had gone to sleep forever. It is the line itself that unnerves me. I keep telling myself that this is temporary, though the fact that here I am standing in line in America is not something that I ever thought would happen. All I can do now is wait for this to be over, just like I did as a child.