I remember my mother having what seemed like hundreds of pairs of shoes when I was a little girl. Way back in her closet, behind the sneakers and slippers and boxes of out-of-season clothes, hundreds of lovely high heels hung in the pockets of a nifty storage unit. Brown, navy blue, black, tan, green, and my favorite: red. You know what the best thing was bout those shoes? Every single pair had its personal matching handbag.
Although Mom never wore those high heels, they were cherished from the days before I was born … when she worked. Outside the house, that is. When, according to Mom, she had nice clothes.
On special days, she’d let me stroll around the house wearing a pair of those heels, the matching handbag slung over my shoulder. On a really special day, she’d clip a pair of earrings on my tiny ear lobes and let me choose a necklace to match. Matching was very important, you know. So was not wearing white after Labor Day or before Easter. But I digress.
What brought this memory on was the sound of clopping outside my front door yesterday afternoon. It was a gorgeous
spring day. Sunny, warm, pollen-filled air filled the house after I flung open all the windows and doors.
I couldn’t imagine what the clopping was. When I lived in Montana, it could certainly have been a horse. Or a deer or a moose. But here? In Attleboro? In the complex outside my townhouse? I didn’t think so.
A peek through the screen door revealed three people and a Jack Russell terrier strolling by. The mother looked normal–a bit on the harried side, her face lifted to the sunshine. The little boy looked normal, dashing around in circles and kicking his sneakered feet in the air a la Karate Kid. The dog looked normal, if on the small side, attached to the little girl by his leash.
The little girl, however, looked splendid!
Clad in a pair of her mother’s tall black high heels and her mother’s long gauzy red skirt, the little girl’s lips had been painted bright red to match the skirt. A long black necklace bounced against her stomach in time with the clomping of those high heels. She managed to get some really good hip action going as she paraded down the street, imagining herself to be all grown up and gorgeous in those fancy high heels and glamourous skirt.
I don’t think I ever consciously realized, before watching that little girl sashayed by my front door, how hard some little kids practice at being a grown up. I still can’t figure out if I practiced too much … or not enough.
