“Mimi, tood you help me find my shoes? My boots are all wet from dat snow.” Granddaughter # 2 was limping with one boot
on and one off. “I kinda tink I left ‘em in da baffoom.” Both of the
Granddaughters had more shoes than I ever had at that age.
When I was about thirteen, most all the girls at school had
penny loafers.
“But , Mother, why can’t I have a pair? Everybody else does.” I whined day after day.
Finely, one day
Mother stopped in her tracks; turned toward me; put her hands on her hips and
looked me straight in the eye.
“How many times do I have to tell you? Your heel is too narrow to wear those. They would rub up and down until you had
blisters on your heels. Besides that, there would be holes in your socks and we
can’t afford to buy you a new pair of socks every few days. Now, end of argument. I don’t want to hear
another word.”
So off I would huff muttering to myself about my awful
feet. Why couldn’t I have feet like
everyone else’s. No one I knew who wore
penny loafers had blisters on their heels. Surely I wasn’t the only girl in
school with narrow feet and narrow heels. Besides, I had tried on my friend’s
loafers. She even let me wear them around her house. I didn’t have any problem keeping them on if
I curled by toes under. I don’t know why Mother couldn’t understand that. Someday I would have a pair of brown penny
loafers; matter of fact, I would have a closet full of brown penny loafers.
AND, every pair would have a shiny copper penny in the slit across the top of
each shoe.
In a couple of years, the loafers were no longer the
craze. By the time I was fifteen , black
and white saddle oxfords were all the rave. And, wonder of wonders, they tied
so they didn’t slip up and down on my heels.
So, I had a pair of saddle oxfords. I polished them every night and
every other night, I put in new shoestrings . I had two pair of shoe strings so
I could wash one and wear one. After
all, a girl certainly didn’t want to be caught with dirty shoe strings.
When I was about three years old, I had a pair of “for good”
white high tops. Mother would scrub me until I thought my skin would fall off.
Then she would comb my blond hair and pull part of it up on top of my head so
tightly I thought my eyes would pop out. Then on went the little starched “for good”
dress and my short white stockings. Then
the white high tops would be laced very tightly and tied in a double bow. I
loved my little white high tops because they were my “for good” shoes. If Mother put those on me, I knew we were
going somewhere special. My high top
shoes were the finest anywhere I thought….that was until I went to visit my
great-grandparents. Now that was a
different story…………..
(Story to be continued)
Why do we always want something someone else has? Why do we complain because things are not as
we feel they should be? There was a time
in the Old Testament when the Children of Israel complained long and loud to
Moses and God overheard. Do you suppose God is angry when we complain?
“Now the people complained about their hardships in the
hearing of the Lord, and when he heard them his anger was aroused. Then fire
from the Lord burned among them and consumed some of the outskirts of the
camp.” Numbers 11; 1 NIV
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