Wet Socks

It was the lack of shoes that had paved the path of most of her life. Not that she hated shoes, quite to the contrary, but rather just not wearing them seemed to be the thread that one could follow through the majority of her life. Not quite as dramatic as the guy who builds homes in his bare feet, risking stubs and mud on the job site. And not like Tammy Duckworth whose prosthetics are their own special kind of shoes. Or certainly not a dramatic as Simone Biles whose tiny, naked feet launch her into the stratosphere while she flips and spins to her hearts content.

Rather, it was the lack of shoes on one Saturday morning that again, defined Anne’s next phase of life.

And it was Jack-a-Lulu’s pitiful crying that sealed the deal.

Just after Christmas a few years back, Anne found a skinny, dirty, hungry cat on her doorstep. Being in the Northeast in winter is hard on any animal, and this tiny feral cat was not prepared for the cold and the wet. Under fed, short hair, and pregnant, Anne took her in.

In the years that followed, Jack-a-Lulu found solace in the basement, where she was safe from the attacks of Anne’s other two cats, siblings who had their own special language. Siblings, who hated Jack.

And it was behind the gate to the basement where Jack would send up her lonely cries for attention, that were Anne’s siren call.

And so, on that fateful Saturday morning, following the meow meows of the sad basement cat, Anne found her feet, clad only in socks, suddenly sopping wet.

The basement held everything that was anything for Anne and her husband. Among the boxes and bookcases, spare furniture and winter clothes, was two lifetimes of possessions that were kept, but no longer used.

And it was one bookcase, sitting atop a soaking wet carpet, that became the special attention of the morning. Anne at first thought poor Jack had gotten scared again, and wet the carpet. But as she explored, and her socks got more and more wet, she realized most of the carpet was soaked in water.

Throwing open the door to the utility room, she found the culprit. A broken water heater, and a huge pool of water.

Chaos ensued as Anne and her husband cleared the room of its contents, boxes and books, furniture, and paintings. The huge bookcase was moved. Carpet was ripped out, fans brought in, and the plumber was called. Poor Jack-a-Lulu disappeared for the rest of the day. Probably under the spare sofa.

A week later, as Anne was putting the basement back together, she was unloading a hastily packed box of books.

It was in that one box the old photo albums had been dumped. Along with some cookbooks, and a few notebooks. She pulled out her scrapbook from high school. A sketch book with few sketches, but lots of photos from the 80's of her big hair friends and crappy local bands she used to worship. A picture of a gorgeous, pre-teen Russian model from Interview Magazine, and a lock of hair from some boy Anne couldn’t even remember the name of, but had thought she had wanted to spend the rest of her life with. The flimsy, spiral bound sketchbook fell apart almost immediately, and Anne carefully filed the pages into a manilla envelope, and put it all back in the box.

But under that book, had been a tiny, black moleskin sketchbook from her college days, when shoes were specifically not welcome in the classroom.

A tiny picture of toddlers in ballet class was taped to the cover, the tape now brittle and yellow from age. She remembered exactly what was in that sketchbook, and couldn’t believe she had found it again.

It was one in a long line of sketchbooks she had in college. She adored the thick covers, the feel of the moleskin, and the white, blank pages. It was in these books she kept all her dreamed up ideas for dance performances. And, more importantly, all those difficult dance combinations she worked to learn in 4 years of modern dance school. All carefully laid out, step by step, with crude but effective stick figure dancer drawings and lots of arrows. The pages perfectly suited to her made-up language of dance notation, that no lined page notebook could have given respect to.

Page after page of ideas, drawings of dancey things, sketches of costumes, music carefully counted out, and a few precious photos. Some phone numbers in the front, and class times, some notes from and to friends in the back pages. But the middle was the gold, all those dance movements, carefully laid out.

Anne was no youngster anymore. And after years of injuries to her feet, she doubted she would ever dance again. But the years healed her feet, and greater weight made her long for her younger, more agile self. She had pined for her notebook, and all it took was a lonely cat and a broken water heater to reunite her with one of her great loves.

Like an elephant in the circus, Anne clumsily followed her dance instructions, now 30 years old. She was shocked at how easily it all came back to her. She could understand her language, although she couldn’t do it anymore. A few hours later, and tired with a blister on her toe, Anne closed the cover to her big black notebook, and vowed to keep at it.

That notebook got a permanent place, once again, in her backpack, as she dragged it to work everyday. Combing over its thick pages, she tried movement after movement at work in her free time. Even with her feet clad in thick work boots, she slowly counted out steps, followed arrows and arm placements, and counted to 8 over and over. The pages were like she never left them years ago, still bright white and strongly bound. Kinda amazing as she had borne this book through everything in college, and had fortified the spine with dance tape. But the cover was still strong, and she reveled in its luxury and feel. That notebook had been a big purchase for her, as she was a scholarship student, and didn’t have much spending money in college. A splurge she could not do without. She had a bunch of the cheaper versions, but this one was the softest one, and was reserved only for her best ideas. Anne was so glad she had bought this book, as it kept up so well for 30 years, and all the abuse it had gone through.

Starting when she was young, being a gymnast, all of Anne’s best memories were while she was barefoot. From tumbling and the balance beam, to carefully stepping on the sharp stones that covered her driveway at home, Anne’s life was defined by what her feet felt. College was years of naked feet on a cold marley floor in a huge dance studio in upstate NY. She contemplated a tattoo of a rose vine on the sides of her feet for years, but never could quite give into the idea of that much pain. She crossed the stage to accept her degree barefoot, under a huge tent on the grounds of Bard College.

More years dancing for fun in a huge variety of dance studios in NYC followed. Once the plantar faschiitus took both her feet, she clad them in heavy boots for most of her adult working years, trading them out for ice skates on the weekends. The dream of dancing all her life faded away with yet another cortisone shot. She abandoned her dream of being a choreographer, and instead went into stagecraft as a profession. Watching others perform for a living, through the sight on her followspot, far far away from the stage. For years the notebook and its sisters were lost, packed away in boxes in storage in some dark hole of a warehouse in Brooklyn.

Then Anne finally grew up, and traded her artistic life for a life with a man who was smart, successful, and anything but the artists she had been dating. An air traffic controller. Someone actually competent, who had real responsibility, and held the lives of thousands in his hands everyday. She fell in love, and they moved to the suburbs.

Where Jack-a-Lulu found her in her townhome in New Jersey that fateful Christmas. And where the water heater was just old enough to spring a leak. And where Anne had unloaded all her storage lockers from Brooklyn into the basement.

If it hadn’t been for the feral. If her other two cats weren't bullies. If she had been wearing shoes. If the water heater had not broken. If she had bought a crappy little notebook with a spiral binding, none of what happened next, never would have happened at all.

But happen it did. Anne worked her way through the notebook. Then found the pile of the sister notebooks and worked through those too. Creative ideas came flooding back, and with the maturity that comes with age, Anne found that her love of dance never died, but had in fact, aged beautifully. Half baked ideas preserved in those pages found their fullness. Dance ideas from long dead dance instructors were revived. And great memories came back to life. Anne felt her years had finally found a way back to the passion of her youth, giving voice to countless dreams she’s had over many decades. And it couldn’t have happened if she had been wearing shoes that day. Or if she hadn’t loved that thick, soft notebook so much.

And there was a treasure map in the back someone drew for her. It had been a joke, like one of her creative dances. But then she found lots of money. And lived happily ever after.