There are not many times in life when we get exactly what we want. But it’s important that we do. It’s a way to recognize satisfaction when we feel it.

When I was about five-years old, I got a pair of patent leather shoes from my grandmother for Christmas. They were Mary Janes, exactly the kind of shoes I had asked for. I was so excited to see them and so happy to have them that when I went to bed that night I put them under my pillow where I could smell them and take them out in the night and hold them in front of my face. Even in the dark they gleamed and glinted, my complete satisfaction at finally having them, making them glow before my very eyes.

When I woke up the next morning, the hard, cold spot that was always in my stomach felt softened. Something I had so wanted in my child’s heart had been given to me. I had my shoes! Not my cousin’s worn out shoes, not shoes with the toes cut out, not brown shoes with laces from the Salvation Army that are good enough and you’re lucky you have shoes at all young lady shoes, but my shoes, my completely frivolous, not at all practical, wantonly wasteful in their fashion, black patent leather shoes.

Oh happy day!

For weeks I would wear my shoes during the day and at night put them where they belonged, under my pillow.

“You’d better be careful with those shoes. Your grandmother doesn’t have money to throw away, you know.”

I’d polish them with Vaseline, spreading the gooey gunk all over their scuffed little toes with my fingers and sneak some toilet paper to rub it in and shine, shine, shine.

“Don’t be wasting that stuff on those shoes. We’re not made of money.”

I’d save the toilet paper by folding it up and putting it inside my shoes and wearing them that way. It would make my feet hurt, but I wasn’t going to not polish them and I wasn’t going to not wear them.

“You can’t wear those shoes to the beach. They’ll get full of sand.” But, I learned how to get the sand out by removing the leather foot pads from inside them and shaking them out.

One day, I pushed my feet into my shoes and the tops of my feet bulged out like balloons. I pushed my feet into my shoes anyway and wore them anyway and they gave me blisters. Soon holes broke through on the soles and every day the holes got a little bigger. Every day the balloons on top got a little bulgier.

“You can’t keep wearing those shoes. You look ridiculous.”

But I did keep wearing them. I couldn’t let them go. So much would go with them if I did.

One day I went into my room and saw them on my bed sitting next to each other. I could tell right away something about them was funny.

“I had to cut the toes out. You couldn’t keep wearing them that way.”

There was a bright red edge in the lining that showed around the jagged cut in the leather my mother had made with her razor blade. When I put the shoes on I looked down to see the familiar shine there, but what I saw instead were the toes of my socks staring flatly back up at me.

My shoes looked ugly. Deformed.

“Oh no!”

I would never have cut my shoes. Never. I couldn’t stand to see my stupid grayish-white socks at the edges of my shoes. They made them look awkward and clunky instead of graceful and glamorous.

“That should teach you to ask for such impractical things. If your grandmother had sent you oxfords for Christmas you’d still have a pair of shoes that fit.”

I still wore my shoes to the beach though—barefoot. I could stand to see my real toes hanging out over the edge of the soles. I just pretended I was wearing sandals. I also wore them to play in. But they had lost their luster. There were no more scuffed toes to polish with Vaseline and the holes on the bottoms kept getting bigger and bigger and I remember distinctly the sensation I had when I felt the ground make direct contact with my feet.

I knew it signaled the beginning of the end.

It’s wonderful to be a child and to have our desires so easily met. As we grow older, things get more complicated. We have desires shaped like round holes and it seems that we are always having to try to push square pegs down into them.

Yes, my mother’s words were deprecating. But I would learn as an adult that it was her fear talking. Her fear, and likely the fact that she herself had not ever had her own personal equivalent of patent leather shoes. She wasn’t trying to steal my joy—and I didn’t have to lay her words over my experience or let them take it away from me either.

Today I still remember the feeling I had that morning a lifetime ago when I awoke remembering that I had gotten exactly what I had yearned for. I still remember the joy and exuberance. It colored my world.

In fact, today, I feel that feeling over and over again. Every morning when I wake up. It’s an important feeling to feel.

It’s the feeling of satisfaction.

~

Author: Carmelene Siani 

Editor: Caroline Beaton

Photo: Flickr