The Butterfly Hours Memoir Project: HIGH HEELS

For 2019 I'm running a year-long series on my blog in which I share my responses to the writing assignment prompts found in THE BUTTERLY HOURS by Patty Dann.

I welcome you to join me, if you like! I've divided the prompts by month, and the plan is to respond to 3 (or so) a week. For some of these I may write poems, for others prose. The important thing is to mine my memory. Who knows where this exploration will lead?

In January I wrote about: apron, bar, basketball, bed, bicycle, birthday, boat, broom, button, cake, car.

In February: chair, chlorine, church, concert, cookbook, couch, dancing, desk, dessert, dining room table, diploma.

March: divorce, door, dream, emergency room, envelope, eyebrows, first apartment, first job, food, game, garden.

April: I took a break to focus on ARTSPEAK: Happy!

Here are the prompts for May: gloves, great-grandparent, guidebook, gun, gym class, hair, hands, hat, high heels, honeymoon, hood.

HIGH HEELS

Wow -- here's another prompt that I've written about in CAN I TOUCH YOUR HAIR?:

poems by Irene Latham and Charles Waters,
illustrations by Sean Qualls and Selina Alko

Shoes

I want ruby slippers

with heels to click

me to another land

or glass slippers

to make a dancer

out of me.

But Mama says

shoes should be

sensible --

plain white 

or solid black

to go with everything.

So that's what we buy.

When I show Patty Jean,

she gives me

her rainbow socks

and a pair of purple 

shoelaces.

When I look down

I can't believe

those feet belong to me.

- Irene Latham

If you read the poem, you can probably guess that my (practical) mother was not one to wear high heels. I cannot remember a single time, ever. So I never really had that example, and it wasn't something that I spent a lot of time longing for. (I was definitely more about wanting a little flash and color to distinguish myself/claim my individuality.) The highest heel I ever wore was probably an inch and a half, and those were pumps I wore for a pageant. I wasn't quite comfortable walking in them – I always feared I would fall. To this day, put me in flip flops, and I'm a happy gal!