Yes, you read that correctly.
What are your AMES? Perhaps I will discuss aims later…but for now, I want to talk about Ames.
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When I was a young girl, around about twelve-years-old or so, my friends and I entered the stage of interest in the latest fashion fads. It was the 1970’s and shoes…well…the right pair of shoes could take you places, so to speak…
I remember the platform heels and the clogs and…the Dr. Sholl’s sandals.
Because at twelve-years-old I suppose it was quite important to wear orthopedic exercise sandals when you and your friends walked around the block with your hippie halter top and short short shorts in that hot sun on the hot asphalt on those seemingly carefree lazy hazy days of summer.
Dr. Sholl’s sandals were not only a hot item, they were a bit expensive. At least for my family.
I remember the trips to the old Caldwell’s Drug Store on Kirkwood Highway and as my mother did her business there I would wander into the aisle where there was a display of these shoes.
I suppose it was logical to find them in a drugstore since essentially, their extremely high arch support and sculpted under-support of your toes was, for some people, a medical necessity!
I actually have flat feet and when I would try on my friend’s pair of these (I can see them in my mind’s eye…navy blue…they were navy blue…) they kinda hurt to walk in.
But, that was beside the point!
In a sense maybe this was one of my early encounters with envy and covetousness, but I am not going to condemn my twelve-year-old-self for being twelve-years-old…as I really don’t think these things are the kind of things Scripture takes particular aim at.
Rather, they can probably be lumped into the category of childishness and human weakness, rather than raging sins.
At least, at age twelve.
I “think” in some theological traditions, this is before the “age of accountability!”
And I will go with that.
Ha.
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I mention covetousness only to emphasize how clear the images of this story still live in my mind!
Dr. Sholl’s sandals come in a bright yellow box, I knew this quite well.
In my mind’s eye I kinda see the shelf where all these boxes were, marked with sizes.
I would ask my mom – or especially, if my dad was along, yeah…I would ask my Daddy… if I could buy a pair!
Always the answer seemed to be “no” or, “some other time.”
In my writings I often can’t stray too far without mentioning and re-mentioning how difficult my homelife was, due to my mother’s severe mental illness.
I mention, to set context.
Most stories of our lives need context, otherwise the reader may fail to take in the full depth of the telling.
Also, I believe my context probably resonates and connects with readers to their life context(s) in many ways.
I’m not the only one who grew up in a home where argument over money and, in retrospect, understanding the extent of how bad things were financially, is the recollection.
I’m not the only one who grew up with a mentally ill parent…or fill-in-the-blank for other ways a parent is unstable…alcohol, absenteeism, gambling, drug addiction, work-a-holism, authoritarianism, violence…etc. – and was the norm.
I’m not the only one who grew up in a home where there was full blown hoarding developing.
AMES and AIMS
My aim in sharing context for this AMES story probably should start with the hoarding.
At twelve-years-old I found myself retreating in the evenings into the section of our basement called the “rec (recreation) room” which was divided off from the inner basement where our laundry was done and my father’s workshop existed.
The rec room had the old linoleum tiles but still had concrete walls, as our family never paneled it as most in the neighborhood seemed to do.
My mother kept migrating tons of “junk” – boxes of newspapers and magazines she would someday read, furniture, clothing that needed washed or sorted, her neighborhood “spy notes” and “evidences” and…all kinds of “stuff” – into the basement.
The upstairs was so bad that often my friends were not allowed inside, or, my mother would created a “path” cutting from our front door to my room by stacking furniture or hanging curtains across the living room ceiling in order to “block” all the junk.
Then, (by appointment of course!), my friends could be escorted through this makeshift strange path (our living room was about 15 x 20 feet total I’m estimating) into my bedroom.
In my bedroom was normal stuff like KISS posters and vinyl record players, Barbies and more…!
At one point, my mother decided to partition off the “rec room” and push the junk to the back, blocked by another full-length curtain.
This allowed the very front of the rec room, immediately accessible from our backdoor and down the stairs, for me to entertain friends.
I was allowed to have some furniture in that area, and I recall an older TV set that I put in the corner.
Sanctuary
To say that this area was my twelve-year-old sanctuary is probably an understatement.
I was an only child with a vivid imagination and the drive back then that I still have now to somehow make my situation “better.”
I arranged the furniture – maybe a couple of old recliners or something…a loveseat…I don’t quite recall…maybe a little table of some sort…a piece of carpet….I arranged it like it was a real living room.
A real living room like my friends had – where people could come in and sit down on recliners and put their Pepsi Cola on a nearby table.
A living room that had a TV to watch old classic movies or The Carol Burnett Show.
I made this space my own, and it was sacred to me, in a sense.
I prided myself in vacuuming and using cleaning supplies – something I never saw my mother do, and that my father squeezed in when he could – or when she would allow him to clean.
Since my aim at twelve-years-old was to grow up to be a gymnast (Ha…I actually have this documented in a school-written autobiography which includes future goals, written around that time!) I also remember doing handstands, back-bends and back-walkovers in that area (inspired by Olympic girl Nadia Comăneci, of course).
Being able to fling my hands on tiled concrete and my legs up against the wall for longer than I could outside was a feat I also took pride in – a stunt my Daddy worried about and a stunt I would have never shown my mother, most likely!
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It was in this childhood sanctuary late one summer’s day that my father came home from work and walked down the stairs with a shopping bag containing a box, and handed it to me.
Of course – though glimpses of this memory are pretty clear, I often recollect the sense of light streaming in through windows in a memory, which in this case probably was the northeastern July summer sun around 6 pm filtering through the small basement windows, probably giving a glow that didn’t require me to have a lamp on – still, I am trying to piece this into a story that can be told…
I think I asked my dad what it was, and he said, “Open it and look.”
I opened a shoebox – not a bright yellow shoebox, but a shoebox nonetheless – and there was a size 7 (yes, I remember that) pair of taupe orthopedic sandals that looked an awful lot like a pair of Dr. Sholl’s sandals.
But, they appeared to be made of some type of plastic rather than wood, and though they appeared quite similar, I noted some differences.
I think my dad said to “try them on,” to see if they fit me, which I did.
And they did fit me, perfectly.
They felt good.
I looked down at my feet and thought they look good.
And that made me smile.
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I asked my Daddy where he got them.
You see, my mother controlled the money.
My mother did the shopping other than most groceries – since he did all the cooking, it was he and I who would trek to the old Shop Rite in Stanton together on Saturdays.
On many of those days I recall the arguments that preceded – arguments about money and buying milk or bread but not this or that….I remember how my mother doled out lunch money day by day to my father.
Sometimes my father would bring home bags of outgrown clothing a co-worker would give him, as his daughter was a bit larger than me.
I am certain my young mind was wondering where my father got these shoes from. (Actually as I write this something is coming to mind – perhaps my father’s co-worker, a man named Pat Tooney who had the young daughter Judith whom I became penpals with and the recipient of her outgrown clothes – though I’d never met her – had told my father that Ames carried these shoes).
I don’t know for sure, but I clearly remember my Daddy then told me that he had been at the Ames store (this was an old department store chain similar to K-Mart) during his lunch hour and had seen those and had bought them for me.
This story is so significant to me that I cannot write this or tell it – and I’ve done that many times before in trustworthy situations – without emotion.
It’s a good emotion.
Emotions are good things.
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I was a child – nevertheless I believe even then, I thought very deeply about many things.
What I recall thinking about was that my Father was very aware of how much I wanted these sandals.
I was taken aback that my Father was thinking about me and my desires when he was absent at work.
And that my Father had somehow gone out of his way to buy these for me, with money I wasn’t sure the source of.
I actually remember asking him how much they cost, I believe…
And the best part of this memory is that my Father knew my shoe size.
It was just so…
…personal.
How on earth did my 61-year-old father who never bought me a personal item such as clothing or shoes to my recollection of that point know that a size 7 would fit me?
This was a sacred exchange.
A memory that should live forever – this exchange with my Father in my little rec room sanctuary.
Well, the Story Ain’t Over, Yet…!
Probably that night or the very next day I proudly wore my own perfectly-fitting-knock-off-Dr. Sholl’s-taupe-with-a-buckle-and-highly-arched-hard-as-wood-but-composite-plastic on my flat feet out to visit my friends.
Now, I imagine some of you readers kinda know where this is going!
Ha…so I want to say that though this also is part of the story – just as I don’t condemn my twelve-year-old self for wanting these sandals so badly, I don’t condemn my twelve-year-old friends for saying what they were about to say to me!
Yes, you guessed.
They said, “Those aren’t real Dr. Sholl’s sandals.”
I can still remember the sense of shame and embarrassment I felt.
That was probably where I first learned the word “knock-offs.”
What I heard somewhere in my soul was along these lines: that gift your Daddy gave you – in your sanctuary – that you smiled at and felt loved by – it isn’t the real thing. It is “less than.” And you are still “less than” since you still don’t have a real pair of Dr. Sholl’s sandals.
Allegiance to the World, Allegiance to the Kingdom of God
In the world – the biblical sense of the world – there is a defining concern about being correct.
Concern about legitimacy.
Thoughts and means and methods – whole sciences and theologies built around categorizing us, defining and labeling us, diagnosing us, prosecuting and convicting us, shaming us, telling we are not enough and that we do not belong.
In a sense we live in a violent world – violence that comes in the form of these rejections, separations and judgements of others.
I’ve been giving some thought recently to what it means to be faithful to Jesus and to the kingdom of God.
In particular, what does and should this look like given that some two-thousand years after the entrance of the The Jesus Story and inauguration of the kingdom of God and its King, some if not most in the Church Universal still show more allegiance to the mission of being correct in whatever it is they view as the genuine or better way to practice matters of personal faith and understandings rather than what they deem are the knock-offs….the metaphorical “Dr. Sholl’s Real Deal Christian” rather than the “watered-down-made-of-plastic-not-wood-or-whatever-it-needs-be-in-a-yellow-box-and-cost-you-what-you-can’t-pay-yada-yada-yada AMES brand fake Christian?”
We would do well to stop this!
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It’s a pair of shoes. (The forms, traditions, practices and understandings of the many denominations).
Shoes come in all types and sizes, but they are still shoes.
It’s a gift.
Life is a gift.
Faith is a gift.
Love is a gift.
LOVE IS OUR TRUE AIM.
Shoes can look and behave differently on their sacred feet in their sacred sanctuaries.
Won’t it be a great day when all God’s children can put on their own shoes and AIM at dancing together in His kingdom?
“Then Jesus beckoned a child to come to him, placed it in their midst, and said, “Amen, I say to you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
(Matthew 18:2-3 New Catholic Bible)
“He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
( Matthew 18:2-3 NIV)
“For an answer Jesus called over a child, whom he stood in the middle of the room, and said, “I’m telling you, once and for all, that unless you return to square one and start over like children, you’re not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in. Whoever becomes simple and elemental again, like this child, will rank high in God’s kingdom. What’s more, when you receive the childlike on my account, it’s the same as receiving me.”
(Matthew 18:2-5, The Message)
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Thank You For Reading
Please Feel Free To Express Your Thoughts Below
Thank You For Reading
Please Feel Free To Express Your Thoughts Below
