Easter Shoes

Easter Shoes

Although The Songwriter is currently in the market for a new car, this does not mean the purchase of one is in anyway imminent.  At present, there is not one rolling the roads here in the states that he actually cares for.  We sit at traffic lights watching the current crop fly past, utterly disenchanted.  He says that they all look the same.  He’s right, it’s quite a homogenized bunch.  For me, the woefully uninspired choices in colour  are the most frustrating.  Silver, silver, champagne, white.  Occasionally a red one floats by, but then we’re back to silver, silver, champagne, white.  One might as well be colour blind, my pistachio green Fiat notwithstanding.  

Colour works a particular sort of magic in my soul,  perhaps because I’ve always been one who thinks in pictures.  There’s a wonderful quirk of brain chemistry called synesthesia in which humans tend to involuntarily assign colour to numbers and, while I don’t consider myself one who is afflicted/blessed with this condition, I must admit the number five has always been as yellow as an egg yolk to me.  More than scent, more than sound, colour illuminates my memory as effectively as a time machine.  A special shade of brown conveys me back to the creaky wooden floors of my elementary school as I stand looking down at them in the lunchroom line.  There is also a certain shade of pink and honey that, even if I encounter it in an autumn sunset, forever speaks of Easter.

These evocative Easter colours are shyly emerging all around me at present and were obviously in my mind last week when one of my favourite bloggers, Vicki Archer, did a delightful post on white pumps which are, apparently, the shoe du jour.  Gazing at that charming white footwear, I was immediately transported back, back to a little shoe shop in my childhood.  It is the Saturday before Easter and as my mother pulls back the wooden door, a little bell signals our entrance.  We are on our annual foray to buy Easter Shoes, a tradition as aeonian as chocolate bunnies and church.  My dress is white this year and we are here to purchase white shoes to match.  The salesman is young, even to my eight year old eyes.  I stand in a little metal contraption that measures my foot, then sit as he places said foot inside a white, pointed-toe, kitten-heeled shoe.  Now let me admit right off.... I have always had long and slender (alright, skinny) feet.  Even so, I do not appreciate the laughter that ensues when this upstart of a shoe salesman sees my foot in that long white creation.
 “Wow!  Looks like she’s wearing skis!”, he roars.
  To this day, I’m slightly peeved at my mother for joining in the giggles
 and I remain a lady who steers well clear of white pumps.

Whatever our education or exalted station in life, are we all still shadowed by words spoken in childhood, words that retain their power to unconsciously provoke pavlovian responses and alter our behaviour without our concert or consent?  I fear this happens more often than we realize.  When I see a reed thin lady choosing clothes to cover non-existent thighs, I know she was a chubby child.  Whenever I’m around someone whose reticence to share their ideas borders on the fearful, I know those ideas were not cherished, were perhaps even denigrated, when they were small.  Those of us who arrive at the station of adulthood without this type of baggage should kiss the ground upon disembarking, for I believe it’s a rare thing indeed.

To be honest, I quite like my feet these days. High arched and bunion free,
 they work exceptionally well with rarely a complaint and look quite nice 
when freshly pedicured and painted. 
 My height has finally reached a point where their length makes sense.

  But still... I cannot shake my aversion to white pumps. 

 Especially at Easter.