Yahoo News She never forgot the fight. I never forgot the boots: my sister found an heirloom we thought was gone forever
When my little sister and I were teenagers, my grandmother gave our mother three pairs of fine old Italian shoes: green woven leather sandals, two-tone pumps; and reddish brown leather boots that came up just over the front of the knee.
All were high heels, which my mother did not often wear. They lived in a cupboard – one she had built herself in the woodworking space she had assembled in our basement – and were allowed out with us only when given permission. In those days, she was a TV news reporter. Her clothes were beautiful, but always worn with flats: penny loafers, Church’s brogues.
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The delicate straps of the green woven leather sandals did not last long. The two-toned pumps I wore until they died a scuffed and undignified death. But the last pair disappeared before their time was up and took on a significance that came walking back to me recently, on my 31st birthday.
The boots were the most perfect pair of shoes I have ever seen. The leather was soft and worn, they had a thinnish block heel and a gently rounded toe. They were racy but elegant. My mother eventually allowed my sister and I to have joint custody of them. Our parents are divorced and their custody, too, was split down the middle: a week at our mum’s and a week at our dad’s.
The boots were beautiful; we wore them sparingly, parted with them grudgingly. I wore them to my high school formal; the night that my university boyfriend and I got back together; and to my 21st, by which time we had broken up for good.
Then, while under my sister’s care, they were stolen from her car.
My grandmother attended a convent school at which sex education was simple: don’t do it
My Catholic grandmother grew up on a farm near South Africa’s border with Zimbabwe. She attended a convent school at which sex education was simple: don’t do it, and no we will not explain what “it” actually is. One night, she got home from a school dance and told her parents that her date seemed to have had a wrench or something in his pocket the entire time. They laughed, explaining what had happened. She felt humiliated, and still, when she tells the story now, her brow furrows. How could they not tell her a single thing about how sex worked, she wondered, and then mock her innocence?
She eventually moved to Johannesburg and went to art school, where she learned even more about sex. She learned about the small “triangle of light” formed where the top of a woman’s thighs meet. She got a job at an advertising agency, where she hand-painted billboards, suspended above the traffic in overalls she had cinched at the waist to make them more attractive. She enjoyed it when drivers honked at her.
In her workshop, my mother made furniture, and once she built a giant wooden book – Alice in Wonderland – through which students entered our school dance. She competed in some sort of extreme adventure challenge where she won a large men’s watch that she wore for years. But it wasn’t just sturdy things she liked: she could make anything. Eventually, she made my wedding dress, sewing beads into fabric that was as light as air and puckered at the thought of a needle.
My sister has inherited this ability: she is an artist. When the boots were stolen – she was about 20 and I was 22 – I was furious and we had a big fight. I forgot the fight quickly, but never forgot the boots. My sister never forgot the fight.
On a recent Friday she sent me a message. She is living in London and I am in Sydney, married to an Australian. A package had arrived from her a week earlier: “I think you should open your present!”
She had found a pair of the same boots, but in black suede. They fit perfectly. She explained that when the shoes had been stolen she felt that it had created a “small tear” in the fabric of our relationship. “These sew that back together,” she said.
She and her fiancé (who is South African) had just returned from a camping trip in Scotland, and I asked whether she had felt a connection to the Scots: our mother’s surname is Robertson, and this is our middle name. She said she had counted the Robertsons who were listed among the dead at various war memorials. She’d also noticed that a lot of people there looked like us: “ruddy faced with dark blonde hair.”
“And very particular chins?” I offered. Yes.
I’m not sure that I’ll ever feel completely Australian. But I know that I only began to feel settled here when she visited. She is where I am from, she fastens the compass needle to the compass. In my old-new boots, I feel like she is where I am always going, too.
