Day 3: There's a Hole in my Sole

Once upon a time I had a nice pair of dark brown slingback pumps. I remember them as being fairly comfortable and they went with almost everything.  For some reason I stopped wearing them, because a week ago I pulled them out of one of the "Squirrel Party" boxes. They now look like this:

Here is my reconstruction of the crime or,  how the slingbacks went from beloved shoes to squirrel party fun. I was, most likely, doing a quick clean-up a couple of hours before company arrived. You may know the clean-up I am talking about here, the one where you walk (jog really) through the house picking up all the clutter, everything that is out of place and tossing it into a box or other container because you don't have time to put everything back into it's rightful place. Then you shove the aforementioned container into a closet, in the basement, under a bed or as in this case, I carried it in the attic. My husband calls this type of cleaning "committing a neatness," as in, Okay I can't find my (fill in the blank), because someone committed a neatness!

I am certain we were having overnight guests because normally I would not have wasted precious vacuuming or bathroom cleaning time by climbing another flight of stairs to the attic.  Further analysis indicates it must have been winter, because I didn't miss the shoes. They weren't in wearing rotation or I would have quickly retrieved them.

Several alternate theories also exist. I, or someone like me, boxed them up with random items when we moved in the 1980's and the box was put into attic storage along with many others.  (WARNING: Never move across the street. It's much easier to empty one house into a truck, drive truck to new location and the unload truck into the other home. Moving across the street takes FOREVER and its harder to get people to help you. Hey its only across the road, you'd don't really need us.) Or theory #2, I simply own too many pairs of shoes and therefore I never missed this pair. Like most crimes I'd venture to say that the truth probably lies not just in one place, but in parts of each theory. In the end, the dark brown slingbacks were forgotten like an outgrown teddy bear until the squirrels re-purposed them into party favors.

Those partying squirrels chewed right through the sole of my once favorite shoes, exposing all the layers underneath. No telling what those little squirrel brains were thinking. They didn't leave a note. When I see this photo I am reminded of the hole in my own soul. It's just as jagged as my shoe with softer bits of grief and regret showing through the hard angry shell.

When I visited my sister a few days ago and my brain was shouting, more time, please God, I want more time. My sister Julie and I never had one of those lovey-dovey, my-sister-is-my-best-friend relationships. We didn't hang out together much. We took different paths in life. Disagreeing on many things, especially when we were younger, we fought a lot and in the ways that only siblings can. Julie was first diagnosed with her rare form of cancer around the time I was starting a business. She interpreted my busyness as not being interested in the details of her illness and I assumed her tight-lipped approach to everything meant she was a private person who had everything under control. Ah, you know what they say about assumptions... They were our modus operandi for years. We had an occasional heart to heart talk, but mostly we went on as we always did. It never occurred to either of us to check out our assumptions, to ask if we'd gotten it right.

In the past year I prayed that we'd have a reconciliation, a deeper relationship. I prayed continuously for her healing, for her medical team, and for her husband.  It wasn't until my mom began to have some quirky problems as she was packing to move that Julie and I realized that we needed to work closely together or our entire family would lose their minds. And in the process we learned we were each others' biggest fans. Julie is the bravest (and most elegant) woman I know under truly horrible circumstances. She would probably never use either of those words to describe herself. We say I love you a lot now. We hang out more, too, even if it in is only by her chair in the family room as she dozes. My time with my sister is a gift. I am struggling not to complain about the wrapping, the timing or the ragged hole in my soul.