Wednesday, December 06, 2006

shopping

I need to take the dogs for a walk in a few minutes. Thought I would write a blurb first. Not that I have much to say. It is cold here. Not terribly but you need to bundle up. This evening we have Monica’s parent/teacher interview. She did well this term, so it will be a quick interview. Last week we visited Erin’s teachers. Her English teacher described her as creative – (I love that word). She needs more confidence though. If we could only manufacture that. At the moment I am reading “The Girls” by Lori Lansens. I am enjoying it. It is a quick read, should be finished tonight or tomorrow night. Things here are progressing nicely towards Christmas. Well, I don’t have my parcel out to my dad yet but by Monday for sure. We are visiting friends on Friday night, going to see the Nutcracker on Saturday and hopefully finding a tree (out in the country, cut your own) on Sunday. Maybe I will head out to the malls/stores on Friday afternoon? Did I ever mention that I hate shopping. Probably a hundred times. The girls are showing me pictures and describing things to me in detail. They fear to see me go off without them – they both think I have the worst taste when it comes to fashion. They’re right too. And makeup and accessories. I don’t wear makeup so half the time I have no idea what they’re talking about when they mention a specific eye shadow or certain type of mascara. Gosh help me if I get the wrong tube/ wrong colour. It is all nerve wracking I tell you. I miss those days when they were happy with a Furbie.

Friday, December 01, 2006

The barn boots

December 8th approaches again.. Can’t forget. Can’t forget. I hate that it only comes down to memories now and no matter how hard I try to make these memories tangible they’ll never be. In fact they just keep fading, they crumple up at the corners, they break into smaller pieces until I don’t know what piece belongs where. My sister is only random thoughts and smiling photographs and it pisses me off. And no matter how much I try to get her down on paper, I can never do her justice. Can’t make her whole again. I keep thinking of the barn boots. I keep thinking of Momma Cat and the clumps of sticky barley toys we would buy and take to the barn in our wish to celebrate a little portion of our Christmas there. Barley Toys were probably the cheapest candy you could buy in bulk. A big bag would cost less than a dollar and if they got damp at all they would congeal into one big lump that was almost impossiable to break apart again.

Now, it might have been simply an extremely cold winter that year but my sister and I always blamed our incredible discomfort that we endured solely on the barn boots, leaving nature pretty much blameless.

I remember our mom handing them to us along with a bag of potato peelings as we stood in the cold porch. At home we ate potatoes almost every day and being that there were thirteen of us, there was always plenty of potatoes peelings and carrot shavings or turnip tops that we would take with us to the barns to give to our ponies.

Mom announced that we could no longer wear the boots we wore to school to the barn and that is why she went out and purchased us these separate barn ones. I think, possiably, she might have received a call from the school informing her that our footwear was stinking up the hallway, which I can only imagine they did, especially once the warmth of the indoors got at all that frozen horse manure in the cracks and crevices between heel and soul.
We thanked our mom and took the new boots, each a pair. They were probably the ugliest boots we ever laid eyes on and we both wondered what reduced for quick sale bin mom must of pulled them from? First of all they were too big on our feet. They were shiny black with a zipper that ran up the middle area in the place that usually housed a tongue. They had a small amount of orange faux fur that pretended to fill the inner of the boot but only went about an inch and a half into it. There wasn’t a tread to be found on them and so the first sign of ice we ended up on our backs each and every time. They weren’t rubber but a kind of bumpy plastic that housed not one ounce of insulation and they only went to a height slightly above our ankles. I swear to God we would have been better off wearing flip flops that winter.

That first trip to the barn wearing them was fine. It was a nice day and we swung the bags of potato peelings in between us while we walked through the snowy field, laughing at our ugly new footwear. The barn, where we boarded the ponies, was a twenty minute stroll, through one field, across the highway and through another long field. I am still amazed when I visit home and see that huge field we use to trek through each and every day now reduced to a subdivision, full of houses and roads with nametags. People’s bathrooms, kitchens, dens, garages, and back yard pools now take up the space that once belonged to Sandy and I. And we did deserve ownership, even if it was only to the field itself, because we knew it best. We were often the first ones to cut paths through its thigh deep snow, first ones to make snow angels on each side of that path, first ones to spot green emerging in the spring and we often raced our ponies full out through it or chased them around it when they got loose or threw us off. I remember that field so well and I hope that it still remembers us. That it keeps a fossilize record of our childhood somewhere within its bedrock.
Anyway, back to the barn boots. By the end of that winter we knew them too. They were very evil boots, plain and simple. They wouldn’t even let us keep our socks on. While we walked the plastic sides would push against our socks, pushing them down off our ankles, pushing them over our heels and past our arch until our socks always ended up between that ample space between the tips of our toes and the toe of our boot. They also gave us cherry red rings around the tops of our ankles were their edges constantly rubbed against our skin, These rings would crust over and itch like crazy and I swear those marks didn’t fade until the first week of July. These boots instead of repelling the snow and the wet, welcomed it, encouraged it to enter through the gaps at the top, to slide over our red ankles and pool beneath our arches. Our toes would get so numb that we hated to warm them when we got home, knowing they would go from unpleasantly numb to all out stinging.

My sister, even in our twenties would sometimes bring up the barn boots as if they were old enemies, which would make me laugh. Now I kinda look back at them with fondness, knowing I shared the experience of the barn boots with her. I wasn’t her twin and can’t possibly compete with the strength of their relationship but still I’ll never forget that Sandy and I once withstood a long, cold winter in identical boots. It is probably the only year that I can come close to saying, I stood in her shoes.