Theme Week 13

    

White will never do – white slippers would allow the black dog hair to show up too easily, and Mom wouldn’t like that.  Blue is nice, everyone likes blue.  Or at least, everyone should like blue.  But in the end we went with the black ones with memory foam lining the soles.

                Every year Dad takes us girls out to shop for Mom’s Christmas presents.  These trips are always hectic, and always last-minute.  Not that Dad doesn’t care enough to plan ahead, he’s just a procrastinator by nature, and Mom of all people knows and accepts this fact.  

                Slippers are always on the list, and always hard to find.  Mom being tall, the feet that support her are larger than usual as well.  By the time we get out shopping it’s hard to get any slippers, let alone size eleven.  But we always seem to find them.

                Mom always wears those slippers out in one year.  She loves them, and sometimes even takes them to her sister’s houses for coffee and knitting mornings.  She loves to have warm feet, and in-floor radiant heat is far out of the plan.  So slippers are the answer to the question of how to keep toes warm in Maine winters.

                She owns her slippers, she loves them.  We’ve made some poor choices over the years.  We didn’t know that white was a bad idea until after we had tried it, and cheetah print for a down-to-earth mother of eight?  Again, not our brightest moment.  But she forgave and wore them anyhow, and she owned them, toting them around with her.

                She owned them because they were the only ones that she would have, she owned them because they were hers.  Once a hint had been dropped to my father of whether or not this year’s pair was a success or not, she moved on and loved them.  She wore them with pride.

                My hair is frizzy.  I haven’t learned to own that yet, I wear it in a ponytail.  My eyes are blue, unlike most of my family – I do own that originality.  They are my grandfather’s eyes.  My height is shorter than my family – I am teased for it, but I am learning to be alright with it anyways.  I wear heels, and tease my sisters that they have to look harder for longer skirts and husbands.  

                My heritage is Irish, I own that all the way.  The pale skin that blushes so easily, the auburn highlights in the summer, the drinking problems in our past, the potatoes, the railroads, and the tempers.  

                Too often things come up – things I cannot change – and I don’t own it.  Excuses, shrugs, changing the subject too quickly.  My hair, your father, our home, his mistake, past transgressions, future plans.

                 Refusing to own the things I cannot change is a mistake not worth making.