Pretty Little Feet

Each summer when we were young, my Mom’s mother would fly out from California for a few weeks to visit. We got to go to the airport (which had a very exciting ride called an “escalator”) to pick her up. To make room in the tiny Ellettsville house, my brother would move out of his room into the garage to sleep, the garage door rolled open to the summer air. I slept out there also to keep him company, and my mother made things cozy with an old oval rag rug, reading lamps, and late night snacks.

Granny, whose first name was the very old fashioned Hazel, would arrive with her small suitcase--a sturdy woman with silver-gray hair who without fail enjoyed a daily solitary morning walk through the neighborhood in her sensible size 9 shoes. She was a widow; my Grandpa had died when I was only two. Granny never raised her voice to us, and yet somehow even an expression of mild disappoint from her would bring us to despair, so we were always on our best behavior for her visits. If we behaved particularly well, we could expect to be treated to a Chinese restaurant dinner in Bloomington with fortune cookies and sherbert for dessert.

Once when I was sitting next to Granny on the couch with my bare feet propped up on a chair in front of me, she glanced down and said, “You have such pretty little feet,” a compliment that made me inexplicably happy. And despite the fact that I cannot claim any credit for the feet I was born with and the more prominent fact that my feet are less than extraordinary, I have never forgotten this positive comment. Forty-six years later as I look down at my enameled toes and lightly tanned feet each summer her words come back to me and give me a small measure of happiness—a great lesson in how much influence a single kindness can have on a child throughout his or her life.