Read an Excerpt
Shopping for Dancing Shoes
The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
-
William James
Mom sat on the slightly worn floral sofa in the reception room of the nursing home watching the door like a sentinel standing guard. She was going shopping.
Anyway, that's what the nurse told her. Her silver-white hair was set off by a pretty lavender pantsuit and on her feet, a slightly worn pair of athletic shoes.
I smiled and kissed her on the cheek. "Come on, Mom,
we're going to the May Company to buy you a new pair of shoes. Then we'll stop and get some of that Chinese food you love. Okay?"
She stood up and smoothed her outfit. I marveled at how erect she was for a woman nearly ninety. "New shoes. Oh, boy." Then she looked at me with confusion mirrored in her kind hazel eyes. "By the way, you're a pretty young lady. Do I know you?"
She clutched a small leather handbag that contained Grandma's External Hard Drive as my son called it . . . a book my sister and I created to help her remember who people were and why she lived at the nursing home.
"I can't forget my purse, you know. It has all my important information." She took the book out and looked through it. She read in a clear voice, "‘My name is Rosetta Lachman, and I moved here after I had mini strokes.' See,"
she said, "that's what I mean. Important information.
You're a pretty young lady. Do I know you?" There it was again, reminding me that I was the adult now, and she was the child.
I took her arm, and as we walked to the car, I said,
"Actually, you do know me. I'm your daughter, and I love you very much. You have another daughter who lives in Alaska."
"How lucky. Two pretty daughters. What do you know."
She settled into the car, and we drove the short distance to the shopping center.
Her attention span was growing very short these days, so I knew it had to be a quick excursion.
Not like in the old days, when we would spend a whole day looking for great bargains,
trying on clothes and shoes for hours, and then packing up our purchases and heading for the Chinese restaurant. I felt a little catch in my throat.
Once I settled her into a chair in the shoe department,
she chatted away with the clerk. Since he didn't know her,
he had no idea that mini strokes had robbed this charming woman of her memory. He was very gentle as he slipped various styles of shoes on her fragile feet. She would stand for a moment, walk around a bit and try on the next pair, thanking him each time for being so helpful.
"She's such a sweet lady," he said to me. "How old is your mom?"
"She'll be ninety next month," I said, taking her hand in mine and patting it.
"Wow. I thought she was in her seventies. Ninety.
Wow." He prepared to take her selection to the desk to ring it up.
"Young man," she said in a voice that belied her age, "I like those shoes, but how am I going to dance in them?
When they play that rock and roll music, I just have to dance."
He smiled broadly and removed the shoes from the box. Then he put them on for her and took her around in a dance position.
"Let's just try them out, okay?"
So Mom and the young man danced to silent music as he carefully led her through some simple steps in the shoe department of the May Company. She smiled up at him. "Thank you, young man.
These will do just fine."
I could feel tears welling in my eyes as I said, "Are you ready for that Chinese food?"
"I sure am. You're a pretty young lady. Do I know you?"
That was the last time I was able to take Mom out shopping,
and it will stay with me forever. A few months later,
she broke her hip and never danced again. She's ninetysix now and confined to a wheelchair, but she still has her
"dancing shoes."
-Morgan St. James
