Evening Gowns and Sandals

Put one foot  in front of the other.  Try not to think of the weight of the burden of my "lot" and the fact that my back is bowed down under the pressure of it.. Keep walking. Just keep walking.  Doesn't this place look familiar to me?  Haven't I been here before? ---several hundred times?? Duh.  no wonder---it's a circle I'm walking.  For what infringement I do not know...but there are a number of them that the powers that be could have chosen from.  My feet are killing me.

I want to go out to lunch.  I want to wear my sandals. 

For those of you who have seen Private Benjamin starring Goldie Hawn--a mischievous young girl from a well off family who finds herself in the Army...and frequently in trouble...and in this case has been required to walk a circle wearing full gear.  The line above is the thing that she speaks in the midst of her punishment.

For some reason I just relate to that scene right now.  I'm wearing some tough, heavy , painful gear...and I'm walking and walking and not getting anywhere.  I was in a mall last week, in between MD appointments in a mall wheelchair and looked at the baubles and glitzy clothes and shoes.  When my daughter was tiny...maybe two years old ...and we went to a mall, invariably she would seek out the ladies evening-wear section....and pick the most sparkly , decadent, revealing dress there and she would tug me over to admire it...and she always said the same thing. "Mommy, when I grow up, I'm gonna buy you this because you would look  beeeuutiful in it."

Well, as I wheeled amongst even ordinary clothes, they seemed to me to be as inappropriate as the sequined evening gown.  I would love to go out to lunch...and I would love to wear some strappy kind of clicky heels ---but of course in order to do that I'd have to find a new pair of feet to put them on.  Feet that didn't scream at the slightest touch.  The truth is that your lives don't fit me any more.  Any more than do the clothes my daughter promised me.  My life has shrunk and my body has expanded to make all of that impossible. 

You know what?  This is war.  My life is a war against the powers that seek to shoot me down. Against mindsets that could be my undoing.  Against madness that can also finish me off.  It's a war against pain. A war against self pity.  A war....everywhere I turn I see bullets and dire scenes of carnage.  And I recall my former life.

And I really miss those sandals.