Joy Wooderson, Donna Volkanannt and I at a “comforting” booksigning at Barnes & Noble. Each of us had stories in a different edition of the terrific Cup of Comfort anthologies.
My short non-fiction has appeared in A Cup of Comfort for Courage, Horse Crazy: Women and the Horses They Love, A Cup of Comfort for Mothers to Be, Sacred Fire, and A Cup of Comfort for Dog Lovers. A Shoe Burning appeared in Sacred Fire.
A Shoe Burning
“The shoes burn at sunset,” I announced. “At the top of the hill in the field by the pond.”
A bemused smile creased my husband’s face. Of all the questions he might venture about this peculiar statement, he asked, “Why sunset?”
I had given this some thought. It was dead of winter, and night came early. “The wind settles then,” I said. “Plus, I want my offering to be visible to whatever gods note such things.”
Ever one to add an artistic touch, Robert fashioned a torch for me to safely light the pyre I had built, and he readied enough gasoline to ensure a good blaze.
“It’s a hell of a way to mark your fortieth,” he said.
I had decided to burn the shoes some months before. I wanted a ritual to celebrate turning forty. Setting fire to something from my past felt like the perfect transition from the frivolous pursuits of youth to the more pertinent matters of maturity—from heels and skirts to flats and slacks. For it was not any pair of worn-out footwear I intended to immolate, but the strappy, black snakeskin high-heels with tiny gold buckles that fastened around my ankles. When I was still willing to forgo comfort in the name of fashion, these shoes had seen a good deal of wear. My knees and back thanked me daily for giving up such foolishness.
The old me would go up in smoke and the new, wiser me emerge from the ashes shod in comfortable loafers—or in the case of a cold and snowy winter’s day—practical mukluks. Never again would I bend to someone else’s idea of who I should be. In future, I would be true to myself.
My fortieth birthday dawned clear and icy—common enough for January in the Midwest. Our farm straddles a ridge where wind slices across as if nothing stands between us and the North Pole but a couple of barbed wire fences. Undaunted, I built a column of glued-together cardboard boxes and affixed the sacrificial shoes on top like an overwrought cake decoration.
When the appointed time arrived, we bundled into our insulated coveralls and fur-lined hats and marched into the waning winter light, me carrying the tower reverently like the offering it was, Robert following with torch and tinder. Our black lab and six cats with tails held high completed the procession, but made for home when ice hardened between their toes.
At the top of the hill in the field by the pond, steady blasts of air had scoured the snow to a smooth, crisp finish that glowed softly with the muted violet and red of a dusky winter sunset. I met the western sky with eager eyes, seeing not the end of my youth, but the beginning of a future filled with promise.
I put down my gift and took a moment to admire the whole of it. The brown and tan boxes rose in mismatched symmetry from large to small, and here and there, gobs of glue dripped over an edge. My homemade alter was sturdy, not pretty, yet the shoes atop looked ready to step away. Part of me hated to lose them. Those spiky, impractical bits of leather appeared insubstantial, especially against a bitter January night, but they held memories of going places, of conversations without end, of dancing.
You must be willing to give something up, I told myself, and there is so much to gain. The shoes are a symbol. You do not want high heels on the path you now walk, nor do you need them to talk all night, or to dance.
The frigid breeze biting my cheek reminded me to move. Robert lit the torch; I held it to a lower box. We stood back and watched as flames coursed upward.
The fire burned hot and fast, melting the shoes from view quicker than expected, spiraling cinders into the purple sky. Heat seared through me and thawed a circle in the snow. Moved by the spirit of the moment, and perhaps to prove my point about dancing, I giddily spun around the blaze, waving the torch while my husband snapped photos.
During the jog back to our house, new buoyancy lifted my steps, as if I had crossed an invisible threshold from a weighted past to a lighter future.
Six years later, that fire still warms my inner world. Cleansed of old, restrictive thoughts, I go forward unrestrained, often barefoot.
And somewhere at the top of the hill in the field by the pond, or in a nest or burrow nearby, two tiny gold buckles remember, and glitter like miniature flames.
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