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Shoe Talk
About ten years ago we took a vacation on the Oregon coast, a family reunion on my husband’s side. I walked the beach and thought about being away from my work and the usual hometown crowd, surrounded instead with busy in-laws and all the emotional stew of a large family gathering. Of course, when you walk the beach, whether clustered in a group or spaced apart, you turn inward, into your thoughts, into studying the bits of shell and stones, into the patterns in the sand. Your involvement in those washed up fragments drowns out the voices of others just as effectively as the steady roar of the waves. You are with others - and yet alone. It’s funny; my Mom would have been in her element at this reunion - with the beach as a backdrop and all of the family stuff going on. She would have attentively listened to everyone’s stories, plunging into the smorgasbord of family spats, shifting alliances, personal victories and crushing defeats, like she threw herself into the surf. When I found myself striking up a conversation with the Oregon resort owner, listening to his woes about his adult son’s return home, his renter’s hassles, his tamed seagull, I had to laugh at myself. This is exactly what Mom would have been doing - finding out everyone’s life stories. How they felt, what their troubles were, making humorous comments, commiserating and befriending, getting more out of a stranger than out of her own kid. Her father did it too. He had what she called the “GIFT OF GAB” or as she so graphically put it - “DIARRHEA OF THE MOUTH”. Anyway, I remember the last visit my family and I had with my parents. It was up at a lodge in Minnesota a few months before her unexpected death. I was irritated at her spending so much time getting to know a stranger’s story, when she should have been spending time having intense conversations with me. It was like she prefe
rred new friends to old - and here I was doing the same thing. The Minnesota trip was such a frustrating “VACATION." She was thumbing through newspaper ads wanting me to talk about what shoes I liked (NONE) when I wanted something deeper. I had such few visits with her and for such short times, what with my kids being little and our living 2000 miles apart, that the last thing I wanted was to talk about was something as stupid as shoes. I should have talked shoes, they may have moved into deeper things (soles? souls?). I was mad and rash and frustrated by my parent’s age and deterioration and the shoes had just been the tipping point. Now I think that talk, any talk can become relevant and important and WORTHWHILE, given the chance. I remembered Steinbeck’s comment about creativity, that “art lies not so much in the OBJECT of scrutiny but in the DEGREE of OBSERVATION “. I missed a conversation that COULD have become important or, if trivial, at least one more memory. It is my loss and my mistake. So now, when one of my daughters wants to tell me about her new couch covers or even gasp! a recent shoe purchase, I’m all ears.
About ten years ago we took a vacation on the Oregon coast, a family reunion on my husband’s side. I walked the beach and thought about being away from my work and the usual hometown crowd, surrounded instead with busy in-laws and all the emotional stew of a large family gathering. Of course, when you walk the beach, whether clustered in a group or spaced apart, you turn inward, into your thoughts, into studying the bits of shell and stones, into the patterns in the sand. Your involvement in those washed up fragments drowns out the voices of others just as effectively as the steady roar of the waves. You are with others - and yet alone. It’s funny; my Mom would have been in her element at this reunion - with the beach as a backdrop and all of the family stuff going on. She would have attentively listened to everyone’s stories, plunging into the smorgasbord of family spats, shifting alliances, personal victories and crushing defeats, like she threw herself into the surf. When I found myself striking up a conversation with the Oregon resort owner, listening to his woes about his adult son’s return home, his renter’s hassles, his tamed seagull, I had to laugh at myself. This is exactly what Mom would have been doing - finding out everyone’s life stories. How they felt, what their troubles were, making humorous comments, commiserating and befriending, getting more out of a stranger than out of her own kid. Her father did it too. He had what she called the “GIFT OF GAB” or as she so graphically put it - “DIARRHEA OF THE MOUTH”. Anyway, I remember the last visit my family and I had with my parents. It was up at a lodge in Minnesota a few months before her unexpected death. I was irritated at her spending so much time getting to know a stranger’s story, when she should have been spending time having intense conversations with me. It was like she prefe
rred new friends to old - and here I was doing the same thing. The Minnesota trip was such a frustrating “VACATION." She was thumbing through newspaper ads wanting me to talk about what shoes I liked (NONE) when I wanted something deeper. I had such few visits with her and for such short times, what with my kids being little and our living 2000 miles apart, that the last thing I wanted was to talk about was something as stupid as shoes. I should have talked shoes, they may have moved into deeper things (soles? souls?). I was mad and rash and frustrated by my parent’s age and deterioration and the shoes had just been the tipping point. Now I think that talk, any talk can become relevant and important and WORTHWHILE, given the chance. I remembered Steinbeck’s comment about creativity, that “art lies not so much in the OBJECT of scrutiny but in the DEGREE of OBSERVATION “. I missed a conversation that COULD have become important or, if trivial, at least one more memory. It is my loss and my mistake. So now, when one of my daughters wants to tell me about her new couch covers or even gasp! a recent shoe purchase, I’m all ears.
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