Hearth To Hearth

by Donna Tavano

These Feet Were Made For Talking 

            We New Englanders have often been accused of being cold and unwelcoming.  That’s our reputation anyway.  Chalk it up to frigid temperatures, outrageous fuel prices, or our irritating habit of considering ourselves the intellectual superiors of anyone who pronounces their R’s and speaks like Willy Nelson. After all, if we got to loll around on beach chairs in February, caressed by tropical breezes, sipping mint juleps, fanned by waving palms, and serenaded by Jimmy Buffet, maybe we all would be as gracious as our southern counterparts At any rate, a visiting Virginian has to fish long and hard to hook themselves a gabby Yankee in these here parts.

            But I believe I may have discovered the cure for the Mad New Englanders’ Disease.  It’s all in the feet!  On election day at 6:30 a.m., I was dutifully queued up at the polls with 200 other coffee-deprived, speechless, patriotic pals.   I brought a folding stool with me because I was in pain.  The doctor had just pronounced me the newest victim of that most painful of foot conditions, plantar fasciitis (any illness packing a double I bodes only ill will.)  Not a fan of suffering and self-deprivation, unless it supports the homeless or whales that are navigationally challenged and refuse to ask for directions, I was trying to take it easy.  In my neck of the line, though, I was clearly the youngster, at 55, and guilt descended upon me as I watched my neighbors on both sides of me take up awkward positions leaning against walls and doors to ease the discomfort of their more seasoned limbs. So, I swapped off my stool and guiltily babbled about my ridiculously debilitating and annoying, but not life threatening, foot ailment.  Suddenly, the line of zombies perked up and began chatting, all of them.  If they didn’t presently suffer from plantar fasciitis, they’d already had it, or their wife or uncle did.  We compared the relative merits of cortisone shots in the foot with rolling frozen golf balls underfoot.  Everybody had blown the equivalent of  a week at a luxury hotel on at least three new pairs of shoes seeking a healing.  Like Marcus Welby clones (we are not actual doctors, we just play them in the voters’ line), they regaled each other with admonitions to avoid bare feet, wear splints to bed, strap up with duct tape, go under the knife or eat beets---or was it meats?

            Next thing we knew, we were forced to break up our merry band of loquacious lamenters and vote.  I’m sure if I hadn’t been on the way to work, we would all have gone out for breakfast.  But lest you think this “soleful” ability of feet to create intimacy between strangers (who don’t even subscribe to foot fetishes) ends there, you are mistaken. 

            The prior weekend, my daughter-in-law and I had gone to the thrift shop to assemble a Halloween costume for her.  That’s when I saw the shoes---only three bucks, lipstick red and brand new, with kitten heels, no less!  They screamed my name.  Move over Kate Spade, Prada who?  I bought them on the spot---didn’t know why.  Maybe they’d be good for a costume some year.

            The next day was Sunday, and as I got dressed, I couldn’t take my eyes off those vampy pumps.  My feet begged me to take those saucy devils out on the town.   Well, the raciest place they were going that morning was church, as I sing in the choir.  I convinced myself no one would notice them because my choir cassock just about dragged on the ground. 

            I’ve attended this church for over 30 years, but there are many people I’ve never met.  You know, people at whom you smile and nod politely for decades, but with whom you never actually shared a conversation.  My friends, things were different that day.  First, one of the altar guild ladies glanced at my all-too-obvious scarlet feet peeking out from beneath the black robe, and with a conspiratorial wink, asked ”Been to Kansas lately, honey?”  During the “peace” when staid and taciturn parishioners perfunctorily shake their pew neighbor’s hands, one man, propped up on his cane, leaned over and croaked, “So where’s Toto?” 

            Finally, the service over, I wandered through the coffee hour and was inundated with comments asking how Auntie Em was faring, offering directions to the Yellow Brick Road, and a grandfatherly type, chuckling, made reference to a “hot mama” he had met years ago who had such a pair of shoes---he married her.

            We all stood talking and laughing about nothing and everything for a good long time.  Suddenly it was 1966 and I swear I heard Nancy Sinatra’s husky voice crooning “These feet were made for talkin’… And that’s just what they’ll do… One of these days these feet are gonna talk to me and you…”

11/20/08