No Exaggeration!

Just a small portion

Mom left behind a horde of shoes, which would be perfect if we wore the same size, but we didn’t. Mom was a tall woman who stood on a firm foundation. Before the internet age, the only place she could find shoes in her size were specialty shops. She always said being deprived of well fitting shoes as a child led to her shoe obsession. She remembers her Dad taking her to town to buy new shoes only to find ones that were too small. He would purchase the shoes that were too small and cut the toes off as soon as they left the stores. Depravation may have been behind her obsession, but my shoe obsession is simply based on my love of shoes; outside of that, I haven’t an excuse. A good friend of mine stands on a firm foundation as well and she is as beautiful on inside as she is on the outside. After Mom passed, I warned her (and her husband) that she was inheriting a boat-load of shoes. I actually recommended to her husband that he start plans to build onto their house, which he simply laughed away. Earlier this week I made a date with her to meet at Dad’s house for some intense shoe therapy. Dad had neatly stacked boxes of shoes in the bedroom before going to work. When we walked into the room she just stared at the wall of boxes. It wasn’t until she had tried on A LOT of shoes that she admitted she thought I was exaggerating about the size Mom wore and the number of shoes she had. Not only did Mom have A LOT of shoes, she had a lot of shoes that were exactly alike… Some that had never been worn. She also had several styles of shoes in several different colors. My friend became almost overwhelmed by shoes. She never dreamed there would be so many and that they would actually fit. After working through the wall of shoes, she breathed a sigh. I had worked up a sweat and all I was doing was opening the boxes and reading the size, so I knew she must have been worn out. I turned from the wall and said…. “Now, we’ll go through the ones in the closet.”  I thought she was going to pass out. I keep trying to explain to people that I DON'T EXAGGERATE!!!! If I say there is a “Honkin” bunch of shoes, you need to believe there is a “Honkin” bunch of shoes. Finally, after substantially opening up space in the top of the closet, we were done. We traipsed back and forth from the bedroom to the porch, then from the porch to the car. We filled up the back of her vehicle and half of the back seat. She was speechless. I hugged her and told her not only how happy I was that she would be wearing Mom's shoes, but how happy I knew my Mom would be. Mom thought the world of her and that is no exaggeration!