Shoes for Haitian Children

Large serious brown eyes in small, thin faces. No smile on the lips. Hesitant but compliant, they obey the directions of their teachers and our team leaders.

I hold my hand out to one of them, the littlest of the students in this village school. "Chita souple," I say as I pat the hard wooden seat in front of me, smiling with my heart as I squat on the dirty cement floor.

I murmur through my smile as I struggle to untie the stubborn shoelace and slip off the worn shoe and notice the torn dirty sock...too large and folded under the small foot.

Smiling my love, I call out "28!" to a team member who tosses me a rubber-banded pair of new black cotton slip-ons, compliments of Thom's Shoes.

Fitting the wide foot into the narrow-cut shoe, all the while smiling my optimism while the sweat trickles down my back under my cotton shirt, the shoe just barely fits. Fine.

Efficiently binding the shoes together and slipping them into the black plastic bag that already has some shampoo, soap, toothbrush, toothpaste and pencil, I knot the handles together.

Now the old shoe is forced back on and eventually I have to apologetically ask the child to "compli." They pop right up and begin pressing their heel into the too-tight shoe, this such a "normal" and universal movement for children and parents everywhere.

Finally I tie up the ragged laces and hand the bag to the still-serious child, pressing it lightly against their chest. This belongs to them. "Okay. Bye-bye!" I say and smile with all of me as they leave...and maybe getting a glimmer of a smile in return.

Shoes

Shoes.
Worn. Tight. Seldom too big.
Dirty laces hopelessly knotted.
Boys style, girls style -- no matter, if it fits.

Shoes.
Required for school.
Necessary for long distance walking.
Protecting feet widened and flat from several barefoot years.

Shoes.
Covering filthy socks, frayed, torn,
often too big but smoothly folded under.

Shoes.
New. Black canvas on rubber soles. Made in China.
Seldom wide enough.
Hope they stretch or get passed on to someone else.

Shoes.
Into the black plastic bag with the soap, and the toothbrush,
the pencil and the shampoo.

Shoes.
Home to Mama.

Happy Snow Shoveling of Long Ago

Shoveling snow off my slate front walk the other day (well, several times this winter if you want to be exact) reminded me of making a rink on Lake Katonah...we didn't mind shoveling then -- at least not TOO much. We were anxious to play "Johnny, Come Over!" so the sooner we got that rink made, the sooner we could play. I can still feel my skate percussing the ice and hear the sound of the metal shovel scraping against the ice...push, glide, push, glide along one length, then flipping the snow up off the shovel, turning myself around to begin again in the other direction. Once in awhile we'd shovel paths and play "Fox and Geese," racing and chasing each other around in a wild game of tag.

My thoughts skated down other memory lanes as I continued my shoveling in the present day...proving that shoveling snow can still provide a relaxed and happy experience.

Part of the Rural Manly Scene

Yesterday morning I drove for 20 minutes down a major highway to a small, rural town. My business there was to hang up a poster of an upcoming fundraising event. As I pulled into the wide, snowy parking lot next to the small store, I noticed several pick-up trucks. Uh oh. Instinctively I sensed that I was about to walk into a man-domain. “Oh well, “ I thought, psyching myself up to walk into the building. “I’ve driven all the way down here and I’ve got to get this up…I can do it,” and I pushed open the heavy glass and metal door to step inside. It may come as a surprise that an extrovert like me would have any qualms with this scenario…and maybe my more shy friends would be secretly exultant. Well it was worse than I anticipated – there, facing the door, were three chairs in a row with three middle-aged men sitting there, knees apart, drinking their coffee. I just about laughed out loud as they abruptly stopped their conversation to figure me out. Not being a “local,” I’m sure they wondered about me. And as I turned to my left to ask the clerk permission to hang up my poster, no doubt I got the body scan. Argh.

Naturally the bulletin board was behind the jury. So I sweetly asked if they would excuse me while I slid between two chairs to the wall above the freezer case. As I fastened the poster to the bulletin board, conversation resumed and “Mr. Important” began a litany of petty grievances about people who run around on the slippery roads in a snowstorm and then bellyache about the lack of proper sanding. He backed up his sanding job with a statistic of how much sand it took per so many miles…inarticulate sounds of agreement issued from the other two men. I squeezed back through the chairs and made for the door, thanking the blonde gal thumbing through a magazine behind the counter. I wonder if they bothered to look at my poster?