It was very cold today. 17
degrees, I think.
When Mr. H. and I went out to
run some errands, I dressed warmly. Jeans, flannel shirt, heavy jacket, knee
socks and a pair of red boots lined with fur that I haven’t worn for several
years. They're not stylish, but warm was all that mattered. I really love these
boots, but we don’t have that much cold weather so I don’t wear them often.
Nevertheless, I extracted them from the closet today, yanked them on,
zipped them up and enjoyed warm, toasty feet and legs all day.
With heavy socks on, the boots fit
very tight, and when we got home, I sat down on a step and asked Mr. H. in my
most persuasive voice, “Would you mind pulling my boots off? They’re hard to
get off and you’re so much stronger than I am.”
And so... Mr. H. pulled and
tugged for a few seconds and off came the first boot. Then he grabbed the other
one, tugged and pulled and it resisted, but finally came – in two pieces! The
heel broke off in his hand. It didn’t just break loose from the boot – it
actually broke into two pieces.
“Oh, darn!” I said. “I’ll bet I
haven’t worn these boots more than three times and I love them!” Mr. H. doesn’t
think it can be fixed so I’m out a perfectly good pair of boots except for a
missing heel. Why do we never break or stain something we don’t care about?
It’s always something we love.
Life is like that.
Later this evening, I started
thinking about the fact that I seem to have more trouble with shoe heels than
most people. Sitting alone in my family room, I laughed aloud remembering the
time I wrote a newspaper column about getting my heel stuck in an elevator
track and the note my friend, Carol, wrote me when she read the column.
