Finding the Right Fit

Red Writing Hood - Shoes 

Kir's prompt for us this week asked us to write about a topic very near and dear to many of us: shoes.  You were to write about a pair of shoes of yours or your character's. They can be real or symbolic.

Rachel often liked to compare the men in her life to shoes.  After all, you had to wear them for a while before you knew if they were a good fit or not, right?

For instance, take Marco.  Marco was stylish, expensive and Italian.  He looked great, eliciting many appreciate glances and complements, but after wearing him for just a short while, she found him quite painful.  He was so self-centered that it was difficult to even carry on a conversation with him.  All he cared about were appearances.  He definitely wasn't the permanent type.  It was quite a relief when she kicked off those shoes.

She soon opted for some more comfortable shoes.  Robert was practical like a pair of patent pumps that came in a respectable height.  She wore him for a while until she started to grow and then he just didn't fit any more.   He made no attempts to stretch with her and as difficult as it was she said goodbye to Robert when she started to feel confined and constricted.

And then she went through her Matt stage.  Matt was all free and easy like a pair of Birkenstock sandals.  They had a great summer road-tripping in his VW Van, drinking strawberry wine and smoking reefers.  She wore gauzy skirts and let her hair grow.  He was the perfect summer lover but when winter came along, like the Birkenstocks, he didn't offer much protection against the cold.  She still thought of Matt with a bittersweet nostalgia, often wishing she could slip into those sandals - just for the summer.

She met Joe when she and some friends drove up to a guest ranch for the weekend.  Joe was a bonafide pair of cowboy boots, her very own Marlboro Man.  With his well-fitting Wranglers and his leathery, sun-weathered face, he was very attractive in that rustic sort of way.  She had fun hanging out with him at the ranch, for a time. When he came to visit her in the city and she introduced him to her friends, she found that cowboy boots were only appropriate for certain situations.   It was obvious that he was uncomfortable in her world and he often made pointed remarks about her friends.  She watched with only a little regret as Joe rode off into the sunset.

After all her misfit relationships, she decided to go barefoot for a while.  Her feet and her heart hurt.  Just when she thought that she would be shoeless forever, along came Sam.  

Sam was different than the rest.  He made her feel like Cinderella.  She felt that he was made for her, the fit was that good.  He was the pair of shoes that stayed in her closet for years, the Mary Janes that she wore to the Farmer's Market on Saturday afternoons and to the flea market on Sundays.  With him, she had just the amount of arch support without compromising her wiggle room. She had never felt so comfortable before.

She, too, had left an impression on him, an imprint on his soul and he vowed to stand by her forever. Over the years, like a favourite pair of shoes, Sam, became scuffed and worn, but it didn't matter he was still the most comfortable shoes she had ever worn.  

She still looked at other shoes, occasionally, but her feet always brought her back to Sam. 

Sara's Smile

“Life is what you make it”, she said. 

He could hear her now.  She was always giving him advice on how to live more positively and therefore more happily.  Sara-isms, he called them. 

The thought of this made him smile and as he did so, he could hear her saying, “Did you know that when you smile your body releases endorphins that will help your mood?  So smile even when you don’t want to and things will seem a lot better.”

“Be grateful for what you have,” she said.  And he was - grateful for her, for their new baby daughter and grateful for the opportunities that he had been provided at work.  So why did he have this niggling feeling that something just wasn’t right?

As he pulled into his driveway, he just couldn’t shake the feeling.  Opening the front door, he thought about how he would try to explain it to Sara and how she would make him laugh with one of her Sara-isms. 

“All you have is here and now,” she would say, “Don’t worry about what hasn’t happened.”

“Sara, I’m home.” 

Nothing. Maybe she was sleeping.  She had been up with the baby quite a few times last night and she was probably tired. 

He walked down the hall to their bedroom. His wife was slumped in the rocking chair where she sometimes nursed the baby.  Her nightgown was stained with breast milk, her hair hung limply around her face and her red-rimmed eyes stared straight ahead.  As she saw him in the doorway, fresh tears started to roll down her cheeks.

“I can’t do this,” she sobbed. “I am not a good mother.”

He crossed the room and scooped her up out of the chair.  Falling onto their bed, he rocked her like a baby while she wept, uncontrollably.  He struggled to find the words to comfort her but all that came to mind were Sara-isms. 

“Well, why not,” he thought.

“A very wise woman once told me,” he started, “that God wouldn’t give us more than we could handle.”

She smiled beneath her tears as she recognized her own words and at that moment he was so grateful for endorphins and Sara-isms.

Red Writing Hood

This week's Red Writing Hood prompt comes from Carrie of Views from Nature.

Flash Fiction can be fun and a real challenge. This week focus on the words and the strength of each to contribute to your story. Write a 300 word piece using the following word for inspiration: LIFE.

Girl in the Tree

I wrote this letter in response to a prompt from my IRL writing group.  We were to write a letter of advice to our younger selves. 

Recently, the younger brother of my very good friend posted this photo on Facebook.  I had never seen this photo before.  I believe we were about nine or ten years old.  Something about the photo caught my attention and I decided to direct my letter to her, the Girl in the Tree.  She's the one at the top of the tree.

Dear Girl in the Tree,

This is supposed to be one of those letters where I, your older and much wiser self, am supposed to give you all sorts of advice but I look at you and the confidence that you portray and wonder what you might be able to tell me.   

I don’t remember this picture being taken and when I first saw it I was surprised to see that you were at the top of the tree above everyone else.  This is not how I remember being but Danita (yes, we are still friends) remembers it differently.  When I mentioned my surprise to her, she just laughed and said that I was always brave back then, always the first to try new things.  Really?   I have to stretch my memory in order to remember this feeling and I am not sure when things changed.  You already had so many things to be afraid of, yet you look so happy. 

I guess if I had any advice to give you at all, it would be this:  Don’t lose that fearlessness because in the process you will lose yourself and let me tell you, you will spend a whole lot of time in the future looking for you. 

I know you have this inherent need to please others but don’t put everyone else's needs above yours because eventually you just forget your own and, again, you will spend a lot of time trying to figure this out. 

I guess what I am really trying to say is hold onto that Girl in the Tree as tightly as you can.  Don’t let her go. 

Love, Me (The girl trying to find the Girl in the Tree) 

I am sending this to The Red Dress Club for their weekend linkup. 

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June 26, 2011 Update 

I am linking this post to Flicker of Inspiration Prompt #5: A Letter to You at The Lightning and the Lightning Bug. The letter is addressed to the "Girl in the Tree" who is not sixteen, but nine or ten.  I thought that it was relevant anyway.  Please forgive me if I am wrong.

"Write a letter to yourself at age sixteen. What might you tell your sixteen year-old self? Would you warn yourself not to make a certain mistake? Would you ask yourself to treasure being young? Would you tell yourself how much you've changed? You can write the letter from your present self, or from someone else entirely. Feel free to take this in an unexpected direction. Good luck!"