It is Sunday night and after what feels like hours of routines, both kids have been put to bed. It’s one of those comical bedtime routines, where the second Joseph quiets down, Reva calls for us. Then vice versa. And repeat. But finally, the whole house is as quiet as Christmas night and I spring into action. I gather an armful of teeny tiny shoes and make my way to the bathroom. I line up the shoes on top of the toilet and around the sink and prepare to transform. I inspect the sneakers. Once upon a time, they were snowy white and smelt of plastic. Now they are the color of the city asphalt that they stomp all over. The shoe design is unintentionally dirt and scuffs, signs of happy days spent on the nearby playground. Despite the happy memories stored in the scuffs, like memories stored in our DNA, I can’t stand it when Reva’s shoes look like they came out of the chimney.
I stand over the sink, sleeves rolled up, rubber gloves on, dribbling the candy-pink colored solution onto the bristled brush and scrubbing the living daylight out of these shoes. When I finish, the shoes are essentially brand new. All signs of monkey bars, swings, and slides are gone in the dark of the sleepless night. They are as pearly and white as a pair celebrity veneers. I am not sure why I bother, since I know they’ll be covered in grime again in just a day or two. But I do.
All I can think of as I scrub these tiny shoes is how my own father used to scrub my tiny shoes. From childhood until after I moved out, this was always a task that he helped me with. In the vestibule when you first entered my childhood home was a wooden drawer with his supplies. An old shoebox was bursting with various creams and oils and brushes, and using them was Papa’s domain. I always tried to do it myself but I had no idea how to properly apply the cornucopia of creams. There were always streaks and smears. Papa was always happy to step in and teach me a lesson, teach me his craft. I never paid much attention because I was a child, and a teen, and eventually I was a young adult with too much on my mind to pay attention to lessons in shoes.
How is it that 30 years later I find myself in the same position? Standing over the sink, happily scrubbing away in pursuit of pristine footwear? I feel my hands scrubbing and simultaneously I feel the hands of time ticking, and all I can think about it is this: How did I get here? I was once a young girl with a life full of unknowns and now I am turning into my father, polishing my daughter’s shoes to perfection.
Despite feeling overwhelming gratitude for where I am in my life, I can’t help but also feel some heartache that it’s moving so fast. It is already my last day of maternity leave after bringing Joseph into the world three months ago. I am already a mother of two. My wedding day is long past me. My college years are a distant memory.
Just this weekend, I watched my younger cousin agonize over the decision of where to attend college. I remember having to make that decision. A colossal mountain of stress sits on your shoulders and every time you turn your head it follows. Believing, with the utmost conviction, that this one decision holds so much power over you and the trajectory of your future and your life. I personally also felt like college was an opportunity to reinvent myself. To fit in. For the first two-thirds of my life, I was constantly looking forward to entering a new pool of people because I was eagerly trying to fit in. I never had a group of friends, and I was always searching. Maybe middle school would be the time I find my clique (clique being the operative word). Maybe high school will provide the chance. Ok, perhaps college is the setting that I’ve been waiting for. I lived in the city, so I didn’t stay with the same group of people from school to school. But it’s like they always say: wherever you go, there you are.
Somehow, minutes turned into hours turned into days and weeks and months and years and suddenly, suddenly. I’ve blinked and in a split second, the stepping stones to the foundation of my life have passed. College rejections and acceptances, college graduation, my first solo apartment in the East Village, my first job, meeting Brandon, getting engaged, getting promoted, getting married, buying an apartment, having a baby, having another baby. Watching almost all of my friends do the same. Thank God, Thank God, Thank God. And yet, it is impossible to turn my neck without a few pangs in my heart.
So I watched my little cousin fret and fuss and I just wanted to give her a big hug and say: It’ll all work out, I promise it will. You can’t imagine it right now but any choice you make will be the right choice for you. Life takes you on her river ride so grab an oar, choose a side and start rowing. And one day, many years from now, you’ll be standing over the sink, scrubbing your daughter’s shoes and you’ll wonder only one thing… where did it all go?
Tomorrow, in the blink of an eye, I am back to work.