Sensible Shoes

I always favor sensible shoes, it makes sense, you know? Everyday I walk to work, where I stand as straight as a caryatid for hours at the circulation desk, climb ladders, patrol the rows of cases checking for troublemakers, until I walk back home once more.  I live alone now, since Ma passed on, alone save for Falstaff the fat orange cat that once sat on the back stoop begging for scraps.  When it got cold this time last year, I brought him inside and he hasn’t left.  He isn’t much, but he’s mine and he’s waiting for me when I get home at night which is more than I had before he came along.

Every morning the clatter of milk bottles on my stoop wakes me.  I roll over and push Falstaff off the bed.  I chose a dress every bit as sensible as my shoes, it was my mother’s but I’ve cut it down to fit me; I’m thrifty like that.  I hook my thick stockings to my garters, which are every bit as utilitarian as the rest of the things I own.  I sit on the edge of my bed as I slip my feet into my brown oxfords with the thick square heel, and carefully tie them.  Sensible, everything about me is sensible.

I put on my grey wool coat and black scarf, pick up my big, black umbrella and my one  brown leather handbag and walk out the door, my sensible heels click down the stone stairs of the front stoop.  I walk past rows of houses, cars, and the newsstand on the corner.  The headlines aren’t particularly good, Britain has been battered by bombs for years now, they are calling it “the blitz”.  People are saying we should go over and help them, I don’t know if I agree.  We bailed them out last time and we didn’t get much for our trouble.

That war took so much from us; sons, brothers, husbands, fathers, and fiancees.  The ones that came back can scarcely be called lucky; a generation of shattered and broken men, but perhaps they are lucky after all.  Their wives and sweethearts toil to rebuild, but at least they have that luxury.  Some of us weren’t smiled on by fortune or God, if there is one.  Now, if the hawks have their way, we will be back in the mud and the blood of the trenches and another generation of men will come home shattered and another generation of girls will be left alone with nothing but overfed cats to keep them company.

I wasn’t always sensible, you know?  I was once lively and impractical; frivolous even.  My dresses weren’t cotton hand-me downs that my mother used to wear, they were bright and gay.  My shoes were anything but clunky square heels; once I had a pair of red leather ones with cut outs and French heels, can you imagine?  I try not to imagine, it just depresses me further, no one ever looks at my feet anymore.  Joe used to say how could he see the red of my shoes when my eyes were sparkling so.  They don’t sparkle anymore; the bloom has quite gone off the rose, as they say.  How can your eyes sparkle when your heart died amongst barriers of barbed wire, in a cold muddy gash cut in the French country side?  I lost everything for a gain of a few feet of dirt near Verdun.  Patriotic duty is what they called it.

I unlock the library door and walk to the circulation desk.  I remove my coat and hang it on the coat rack along with my handbag and umbrella.  My eyes travel to where a pile of books from close yesterday still sit; they will need to be re-shelved.  I place them on a cart and turn back to my desk.  My calendar is sitting there, yesterday's page still on the top.  I pull yesterday from the dwindling pile and shiver from my head to my sensible shoes.  This winter has been cold and December the sixth is proving the coldest day yet.  Here’s hoping that 42 proves more fortuitous than 41.