I remember well one of my mother’s stories from some 35 years ago.
My mother was born in 1939. She was a child whose childhood took place during World War II and the post-war years, marked by poverty and deprivation. She told me how her mother made her pants out of some kind of old blanket and how the pants constantly poked and scratched her skin, or how she once ate more marmalade than she should have, and for that she got beaten more than she should have… but however, my favorite was the story about the shoes.
She really wanted new shoes. My grandmother, her mother, promised to buy them for her. And she bought it. New, expensive shoes – size 40. It wouldn’t be anything strange, but my mother still has a foot size of 38. And then? She could have been 32, 33… 35 at the most. Grandma said: “The leg will still grow…we’ll put newspaper on it.”
I thought about such horror, tried to imagine myself in that situation, but imagining didn’t work, only tears came. Then I promised myself: “I will never, never be poor!” I never was. I have never bought myself or my children even half a size bigger. That was my silent oath – not to buy bigger shoes!
I violated it.
Here in Africa, I buy a number, and two numbers bigger, and approximately, and certainly… And everything is good, everything fits and everything fits… Life knows how to play a joke with our oaths, so it sends it to you so you can see that there are many more worse than what you imagined.
Like in this photo… well, I’ll give away anything, as long as that leg isn’t bare.
