"I Was No Suri Cruise But I Loved My High Heels Too!"
It was one of my earliest memories although the gift at the heart of this story came the Christmas before...
Those stairs seemed so-o-o-o tall and steep and endless, especially for a five year old who was small for her age to begin with.
We lived in the top two floors of a duplex on Mountain Avenue. It was an old house, even back then. My "Nan" lived on the ground floor. My younger sister and I shared a bedroom in the attic.
That Christmas, Santa delivered my "Sally Ann" doll as promised and after the presents were opened, I recall the thought occurring to me in a flash. After all, when you choose to come into this world on such an auspicious day as Christmas, the birthday, even for the person in question, often takes a back seat to the more famous Christmas baby, at least for the first few hours of the day. So when that realization struck me, off I dashed, up those daunting stairs, first to the halfway landing, a pause, catch my breath then up the rest into our bedroom.
I must have carefully stashed them under the bed or in a closet, for there they were, just as I had left them: my red, sparkly, pretend high heels. So beautiful! So grown up! But alas, up until that very day, even though a child's size, they were way too big for my teeny four-year-old feet. "Surely they must fit me NOW!" I wriggled my toes under the two silver elastic straps as fast as I could, certain that since I was now FIVE, my dumb, puny feet would have grown enough for those plastic resin beauties to fit like Cinderella's glass slipper.....?!
...THEY WERE STILL TOO BIG! Yet down those stairs I carefully trudged, one at a time, and unsteadily into the loving arms of my sympathetic and understanding parents. With one look at "Sally Ann though", my footwear cares soon drifted away and I can honestly say I don't remember what happened to those red shoes.
That Christmas I learned that one year is just a blink in time, a "tap of the toe" in the grand score of things. And further that sometimes, in fact more often than not, things you want the most in life take time and can't be rushed. Time moved painfully slow back then. In fact I was in high school before my feet grew into a woman's size. Now, so many high heels later, my feet ache for flats and flip flops and time flies.