“Same Walk, Different Shoes” is a community writing project that Ben Wakeman organized as a practical exercise in empathy. The premise is simple. A group of writers anonymously contribute a personal story of an experience that changed their life. Each participating writer is randomly assigned one of these story prompts to turn into a short story. The story you are about to read is one from this collection. You can find all the stories from the participating writers at Catch & Release. Enjoy the walk with us.
Note to my subscribers: This has been a fun experiment, and a bit different from my usual content. I’m something of a closet fiction writer and thought it would be fun to dip my toe in with sharing a story here as part of this community project. Enjoy!
Dear Jay,
I want to tell you the story of how I learned to be young. I was thirty-four at the time, which will be a meaningless number to you for a while yet. This story may in fact be little more than a placeholder for many future conversations between us. But I want to tell it, and tell it honestly and vividly, because really, it has everything to do with you.
~
It was my mom’s 60th birthday, and my sister Miriam was throwing the party. She was the one to open the door to Mom’s house when I arrived early with the kids, Katrina and Aaron scampering for the playroom and Emma trailing after them.
“Go give Grandma a kiss first,” I called, “and please play with Emma.”
Miriam gave me a peck on the cheek and a sharp once-over, brief enough before launching into pre-party instructions that I wondered if she picked up on my general grayness. The bags under my eyes, the sag in my step. My used-up-ness. My growing sense that my life was not turning out much better than a crumpled paper napkin I had left too long in my pocket, thinking it would be useful, only for it to get crummy without serving its real purpose. And with the way time accordioned, I was getting closer to my mother’s age with every passing year. Sixty, that distant ridge, suddenly looming.
Granted, this particular shade of grayness wouldn’t necessarily have stood out after months of the same.
“Ellen isn’t coming?” Miriam suddenly added, catching me off guard.
“Of course not.” I picked up the bin of decorations Miriam had dragged out of the closet. “Where do you want these?”
Miriam waved toward the living room. “Just making sure. I sent her an invitation.”
“Of course you did.”
Miriam lowered her voice slightly. “Mom is still her mother-in-law. You know how Ellen loves her.”
“Can you imagine? It’s going to be awkward enough explaining to Aunt Sheryl et al. without Ellen glowering on the opposite side of the room.” This thought reopened the pit in my stomach. And I had been doing such a good job not thinking about the impending chitchat.
“Coucou, Sam!”
I caught a glimpse of Mom’s face beaming across the living room as Katrina tugged her by the hand toward the playroom.
“Hi Mom, happy birthday!”
“Good, now she won’t insist on helping with the food,” Miriam said as Mom disappeared with Katrina.
The food—heaps of it already on plates in the fridge, in salad bowls, in crockpots—occupied us fully until more of it started arriving with family members, and before I knew it the chitchat was besieging me. Social adrenaline and the distribution of plates and serving spoons kept me in the safe zone for a while. I dreaded standing still, glass in hand.
Mom had been freed from the playroom by the arrival of the little cousins—Jack and Miriam’s brood, my cousin Agnes’s kids, another set or two of second cousins, families who had come as far as several hours’ drive. Now Mom was doing the rounds, sparkling with kisses. Everyone could feel how she was the center of gravity. This saved me a little while longer.
“Samuel, we haven’t spoken,” Aunt Sheryl said by way of greeting. I tightened my grip on my glass and said a resigned hello. She peered around the room and said, “Is Ellen unwell? I don’t see her here.”
“No, we’ve—ah, we’ve separated.”
Aunt Sheryl’s wrinkles multiplied as her face puckered. “Oh, dear. Oh, dear indeed.” She blinked a few times. “The poor children.”
Before I could come up with a reply, Sheryl’s son Grant appeared at her side. His forehead was creased with sympathy. “Sorry to hear about you and Ellen, Sam. Really is a shame. Don’t think you’ll patch things up?”
I cleared my throat. “No, I’m afraid not.”
“Well, anyway, at least your career is going well, eh? Jack told me you’ve got some big client.”
I tried to smile but probably winced. “Yes, we’re doing an ad campaign for JPMorgan.”
“Ah yes, that was it—you know, my brother-in-law is in the financial sector, and he told me…”
Grant talked long enough for my thoughts to sink into the usual muddled loop of regret. The years of hustle that had deposited me here. The inexorable drifting apart that may have been my fault or may have been inevitable.
When I was no longer sure what signal my face was transmitting, I retreated into the kitchen to see if there were any dishes to be washed. Mom had beat me to it. At the sight of her solitary figure, I almost wanted to weep with relief.
I sidled up to her and put my arm around her shoulders. I resisted dropping my head onto the cushion of her gray curls.
“Mom, you know it’s against the rules for you to clean at your birthday party.”
“I think I’m the one who makes the rules at my birthday party, Sammy,” she said, nevertheless putting down her sponge and wiping her hands. I chuckled in capitulation, and she leaned into my squeeze, turning it into a little sway. We stood and swayed in front of the sink without speaking for a few long moments.
“I can’t believe you’re sixty, Mom,” I finally said, the most light-hearted comment I could come up with that was still true. For good measure in the truth department, I added, “It—you know, reminds me that I’m getting older, too.”
I half-expected Mom to bat away my reference to my own age, but when she turned her face up to me, she said, “Sam, I don’t feel old at all. I still feel like I’m twenty.”
I chuckled again. “Ah, sorry, didn’t mean to call you old.”
“No, I mean it, Sam. I’m not old. Because I don’t think of myself that way.”
“Right, age is just a number, and all that.”
“Ach, Sam, listen.” She took both my elbows and turned me to face her. “What does ‘getting older’ even mean? What do you mean by it?”
I blinked a few times. “I guess…starting to run out of the energy and possibilities you have when you’re young.”
“Exactly.” She poked my chest. “That is entirely in your head. Why should the next twenty years be any less full of possibility than any other block of time in your life? Think about it.”
She looked at me with eyes demanding that I think about it. Then, gesticulating, she went on.
“Yes, time has had its effect on my body, but so did giving birth to you, goddamn it. And I was only in my twenties then. All it means is a different set of tools and challenges to work with.
“Or, maybe you’ll say, ‘Oh, but you can’t deny you have fewer and fewer years left’—honey, you never know how many years you have left. That fact never changes. If you equate age with decline and gloom as your default—psh, forget it. You’ve made your decision.”
She patted my chest again. “But it doesn’t have to be, Sam. It’s up to you.”
I gazed at her, at her soft laugh lines, the shocks of white frizzing into the gray, the loose skin under her jaw, the flecks of amber in her irises. I tried to see a young woman.
What came to me was—Mom. Esther. Her firecracker joy. The wild dances she danced with us in this very kitchen; the escapades she cooked up while she raised us alone. The time I found her sobbing in the kitchen and instead of playing it off, she tried to explain to me what it meant to feel lonely, even when surrounded by people she loved. Her stinkeye when we interrupted her reading time. Her unabashed snoring. Her dogged patience kneeling in her garden for most of the summer, and her delight with her latest harvest of flowers and sugar peas. Her bent head poring over topo maps for her next coast walk. Her hoot of laughter on toppling out of a yoga pose.
All of this emanated from her now. She was as vividly herself as she had ever been.
And I believed her.
It was like the top of my head had been taken off, and all that grayness was, in a single surge, replaced with light. I was free. I was free to keep living, and living meant life—the same boundless landscape I had been so eager to explore when it was new to me. Still rolling out around and beyond me, topo maps or no. I had, still have, the feet and the heart for it.
And Jay, if I had lifted my hands up in that moment, I can almost believe I would have felt your warm, tidy weight resting in my palms. Because, fifteen intervening years notwithstanding, that was the day I became your father.
Feeling my eyes brimming, I wrapped Mom in a hug. “Thanks, Mom. You are so, so right.”
She hugged me tightly back, reaching up after a moment to muss the back of my head. “Sammy, you’re still my bear cub, you know. That will never change either.”
“Mom, are you peeking at the cake? Or doing dishes?” Miriam scolded as she came into the kitchen. “Ah, mother-son moment, that’s nice.”
I opened an arm to pull Miriam into the hug but she laughed and nudged my arm away. Then she looked at my beaming face and cocked her head. “I want whatever cocktail you’ve been drinking.”
“Mother’s wisdom, that’s what,” Mom said, catching Miriam in a hug before she could proceed to the fridge.
“Okay, okay, love you Mom, it’s time for cake.”
Reentering the fray of family was like turning on the light in a previously dim room. The same people who I had cringed away from minutes earlier were now full of interest and dimension. I still didn’t want to talk to them about my personal life, the sadness and the mess which still had its claws tangled in my heart. But the weariness and the defensiveness—that had evaporated. I stood next to Aunt Sheryl with a goodwill that astounded me.
As we toasted Mom, I felt a precarious shiver of fear somewhere in my new emotional landscape. What if this miraculous lightness was just a momentary shift? It would be so easy for the grayness to settle right back in whenever this little kick of endorphins wore off; I had seen the pattern in myself before. But watching my mom’s radiance made me determined to keep my hold on it. She had given this to me. It was in my blood.
~
Now, Jay, I’m here to pass it on to you. What is “it”? Optimism? Perhaps. But it’s not just about the future, what you still have ahead of you. It’s about being in love with what’s here for you, now. Curiosity, purpose, wonder, openness. Ultimately, peace. These are the habits of a young mind that I’ve cultivated every day from the day we celebrated my mom’s 60th birthday.
And this was the guiding light that brought me, twelve years later, to your mom. Freya. She has a lot in common with your grandma. The first time I saw her, she was playing the fiddle in a band she had started at the same age I was when I learned how to be young. She had stars in her eyes. So did I.
And here we are.
"When I was no longer sure what signal my face was transmitting" - fantastic line!
Beautiful story! The mother’s vibrancy radiates off the page. Having just had a big 60th birthday celebration a year ago, I also do not feel “old.” I’m constantly amazed at how the years have stacked up to this, and determined to savor every moment I can.