Today’s Step!

July 18th, 2012 by Jan

Stop clomping around! My mother used to say this when I walked heavy. And I can still hear her voice and correction loud and clear as I walk around in fancy red cowboy boots!  I listen to myself clomping around, I love the noise I’m making as I walk on the wood floor from bedroom to bath. I want to go to a party in these boots.

Red shooooes!! I sing an Emily Lu Harris song in my head, I’m goin out on the town tonight, in Red shoes……ooooooo.

Ken laughs. I’m not sure if he is laughing at my singing, or my boots? Where did you get those? Linda gave them to me. Aren’t they wonderful? He laughs again, as if I’m being silly and then when I walk down the hall, he yells, “Stop clomping around!”

“What?” I ask. “Stop clomping around” he smiles at me. Says his mom would say that when he and his brothers wore their boots in the house back in Nebraska. Mothers! Is it a mother thing keeping the house quiet, or teaching us how to walk in the world — not to throw ourselves at it. Doing their best so we don’t land to hard.

I have listened to how people walk for years now. I watch them move their bodies and try to feel what they feel. I mimic them inside myself. I think it helps me teach. I watch young men clomp or drag their feet around like old men. I see young women wearing stupid shoes with high heels and wonder about the problems they will have later with their bodies. I watch Peet, who on the other hand, walks gently on the earth, but he calls out with meows and is hardly quiet.

Today I feel like clomping around, but I’m wearing red slippers — not red boots. Today my step is soft and gentle — Today I’m not clomping around.

1 thought on “Today’s Step!

  1. Laur

    good to get away sometimes, nothing better than being home, soft and gentle, love and being loved. Nice.

    Reply

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