Big Shoes on Little Feet

I love engaging in conversation with my tight girlfriends. There is nothing like it. My circle is wide, but we all have kids and jobs and hobbies and men in our lives that keep us from connecting as often as we used to. But on Sunday I had a long talk with Sharon. A new mother for the first time at 31, she is the last of the crew to experience motherhood and it is a joy to watch her fall in love with Jana Nicole. We talked about me: who I'm seeing, is it working. We talked about her: what's going on with baby daddy, when she goes back to work. And somewhere in between, we began to ponder the false expectations we as women so often have and the ways of escape we make for the men we want so much from. I've seen her go through so many relationships and she has seen me through all kinds of situations. It was quite funny. Because we have known each other for so long, we actually KNOW each other. No hiding from those who know all your hiding places and have no trouble finding you. Might as well keep it real. In her tiny, high pitched voice she said to me, "we have to stop making excuses for men." I agreed. I am guilty of such a crime. A repeat offender even. Then she said something to me that resonated within my soul. In that same tiny, high pitched voice that some times drives me crazy, she rang like a bell when she said "we've been walking in their shoes for too long, and their shoes don't fit us." I was stuck. Instantly, I got a visual of me and my size 6.5's clomping down the street in shoes twice my size. Just imagine. I'm stumbling, can't run, people looking at me crazy and they ain't matchin' nothing I got on. That is the way I feel about my life as a single mother. I have arms that can't reach and shoes too big on my feet and ain't no need in trying to disquise it or take them off because I have no choice. In order for me to get where I have to go, these big shoes are a requirement. They come along with the uniform, and the many hats that I have to wear. But I can't lie. I am so ready to take these bad boys off and slip my tired feet into some that fit me. Unless you have walked a mile in them, you can't know how it feels to try and wear big shoes on little feet. In some ways I feel less than human. A second class citizen that has been reclassified and labeled as an oddity. There are other women out there just like me who slipped out of their burning beds and put their feet right into shoes that weren't made for them. And the nigga they belonged to ran off barefoot. Ain't even bother to come get his shoes back because coming back to get his shoes would mean coming back to face the responsibility of the bed that he had helped to make. I'm shaking my damn head now as I write this because reality is a mother. No pun intended.


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