The Red Shoes

I told my younger daughter, now in her 30s, the story of the red shoes. There's no pride or pleasure in this episode from childhood. I am a younger daughter, and so is she. She commented that the youngest in the family goes through childhood as the least capable person in the family: for years and years.

In childhood, it felt like we always had the minimum, no extras. As the younger sister, many of my clothes were hand-downs as usual in that era.

So, you can imagine the excitement when Mum came home with special shoes, red shoes, for BOTH of us.

And not just any shoes, plastic shoes. Something innovative, never seen before. They even had an exotic name - Jelly Lubbers. Who had ever heard of such a thing?

We loved parading around in our new shoes. They felt so special on our feet. We were united in our love for these amazing shoes and we wore them everywhere except to school, and Sunday School.

One day we were at the park, and took our shoes off to climb and play. Mum called, we grabbed our things and headed for the car. I can't remember how long it was before I discovered I had only one shoe. Was it the same day? Or the next day?

I was distraught. What a loss! I was heartbroken. Mum was furious. We went back to the park, but the missing shoe wasn't there.

Home again. Mum was angry. I was a failure. Again. Sue gloated that SHE hadn't lost her shoes. It felt like a betrayal. Like they ganged up against poor heartbroken me.

So.

So, I took my sister's red shoes, crawled under the house, and buried them.

Yes. I did that.

Now, she was distraught and crying. She said she remembered the thump they made when she dropped them into the bottom of the cupboard. I kept out of the way.

Mum was beyond herself. Two useless, feckless daughters.

I was now ahead - at least I had one shoe. But I was broken hearted. Rare, precious and wonderous shoes were lost, I was betrayed by my sister and my mother was furious and in despair.

Sometimes I wonder whether the shoes will ever be found, and what the finder will think. Being plastic, they'll be there for thousands of years, probably much longer than the timber house.

Years later, I recounted the story to my sister, and said I was sorry...... She had completely forgotten the episode.

I could hardly believe it, because it has scarred me for life. It was years before it even crossed my mind that my mother could have handled it differently. She could have sympathised with my loss and comforted me. But no, she could only see her own loss.

With two daughters of my own, I tried hard to prevent the competitive, oppositional dynamic that festered between my sister and me. I am glad to think they are good friends. Two very different people who share mutual respect and care for each other.

The work of the Present is to Repair the Past and Pay for the Future. This story is part of that process.

Eat your vegetables

When we grew up there were no supermarkets. Meat came from the butcher shop and bread from the baker. The grocers wore long aprons and served from behind a big counter. They wrapped your parcels in brown paper and tied them with string. We loved to watch as they unwound the string from a tin hanging overhead, made the knot and broke the string with a snap of their fingers. When we tried it, we just got sore fingers.

Our grocery shop was like this.

We ate an English diet of meat and three vegetables. Cornflakes for breakfast, sandwiches or fruit for lunch. Bacon was a treat and chicken was unheard of because it was expensive and my mother loathed the taste and smell. Occasionally, a chicken appeared if it was won in a raffle. But my mother didn't cook it, in fact she left the house while it cooked because she couldn't stand the smell.

Most of my adult life I have seen myself as easy to feed because I eat almost anything. But when I think back on my childhood, I think that we might have been fussy eaters. I remember a lot of discipline around the dinner table. Not only were we expected to eat everything on the plate, but we had to sit up straight and keep our elbows in while we wrangled our knife and fork. Forks had to be held with the tines down, so mashed potato came in handy for keeping peas on!

My mother had a thriftiness that came from growing up in the North of England during the Depression. So when friends gave her produce from their gardens, it was served at our table. I remember when choko appeared on our plates.

It made me gag, but I was left, sad and crying, alone at the table after the others had left because the rule was that we couldn't leave the table until we had cleared our plates. I just couldn't put that stuff in my mouth. Then I had the bright idea of throwing it out the window, piece by piece.

At the time, I thought my mother was hard-hearted, but she must have taken pity on me because she never made me eat choko again. In fact, it's one of the few things that I still don't eat.

Up is off

My mother taught us to iron clothes when we were nine and ten years old. We were keen and interested to learn this dangerous art.

To iron the clothes, my mother covered the end of the kitchen table with layers of blanket and a sheet. She put the wooden bread board at one end, plugged in the electric iron, and stood it on the board.  This was more stable than standing the iron on the thickly padded surface.

The electric iron was heavy and had a surface that was flat and smooth.  It didn't steam. And it had no temperature control. This meant that the user had to turn the power off every few mintues so the iron wouldn't get too hot.  Our iron looked a lot like this.

Electric iron

It was quite heavy to lift. But it suited left handers as well as right handers which was good because Sue and I were both left-handed.

Mum started us by showing us how to iron handkerchiefs. She taught us to tell when the iron was hot enough. This involved spitting, which was fun! She taught us to iron each edge of the hanky and then to iron across the centre, holding the cloth in one hand and the iron in the other.

We were taught to put the iron face-down on the bread board while we re-arranged the cloth. We were not to stand the iron up on its end the way she did. That was too tricky for beginners and she didn't want us burning ourselves.

Our early ironing efforts were closely supervised, and soon we were confidently ironing handkerchiefs and other flat things. Mum was pleased with our enthusiasm because it meant that she would soon have help with the ironing.

One afternoon when she was out of the house, Sue and I decided to do some ironing.

We set up the table with the blankets and the sheet. We got the bread board and the iron and we plugged it in and turned it on. When it was hot, we ironed some handkerchiefs and tea towels. We were careful to follow all the instructions we had learnt. We turned the iron on and off so it wouldn't get too hot. And we were careful to always place it face-down on the bread board. We were pleased with the good job we were doing.

Then we finished, turned off the iron and went to play outside.

After a while we were horrified to smell a burning smell. We ran inside and saw smoke pouring from the iron which was glowing red-hot. Sue was quick to look at the power point and turn the power off. We didn't dare touch the iron. So we left it face-down on the bread board with smoke pouring out.

Mum arrived home, smelled the smoke,  and raced inside to see what was wrong.

We were frightened. She was agitated. We told her exactly what we had done. She was not happy that we had decided to iron while she was not there, but we explained that we had followed her directions exactly.

We had set it up properly. We had not let the iron get too hot, and we had turned it off when we finished. Sue had turned it off when we finished. I had turned it off when we finished.

Ah-haa... Sue had turned it off. And I had turned it off.

Mum and Sue looked at each other. "Oh," said my mother, "Gillian, you need to know that UP is off and DOWN is on."

DOWN is 'on'.

So, we didn't get into a LOT of trouble, because it was a genuine mistake. Not like the time we set the house on fire through sheer disobedience.

Of course, after the big lesson with the iron, I have never forgotten that UP is off.

Our iron continued to work. Sue and I got better at ironing and we didn't burn too many things after that! Our bread board never recovered. For years afterwards, we used only one side, because the other side had a black burn mark the shape of an iron right in the middle.

The doll called Pedigree

Through our childhood years, my sister and I shared our one good doll. We had a couple of other small dolls, but Pedigree was our most significant doll. There was a whole story behind her which started when we lived in Cairns.

We moved to Cairns when I was five because my mother went to work as a pharmacist at the Cairns Base Hospital on a 12 month contract. My sister started school there and my mother put me into in-home care. The year passed.

As Christmas approached, our mother asked us what gifts we would like Santa to bring. My sister said 'a walkie-talkie doll'. Oooh, how grand! I said that I wanted one too. Sue called me copy-cat and said I couldn't have the same as her.

"Copy cat! Copy cat!"

To keep the peace my mother suggested that I would like a baby doll. So I went along with that.

A few days before Christmas, Sue and I were playing hide and seek. One of us hid under our mother's bed where we bumped into some packages. We peeked inside and saw a doll. Oh! our illusions were shattered, our trust betrayed. It wasn't Santa who brought gifts at Christmas. It was a lie. It was our parents all along. Still, there would be wonderful dolls this Christmas.

On Christmas Day, Sue opened her big package and there was the most magnificent doll with real hair and beautiful clothes. When she leaned forward she said "mama"; and she had a real walking action with her arms moving in time and her head moving from side to side. She was perfectly splendid.

I found these pictures of similar dolls from the period.

My package contained a baby doll dressed in a nappy. She could say "Mama", and her beautiful eyes opened and closed, but her hair couldn't be combed. She couldn't stand up, nevermind walk. And she had no clothes. She looked just like this.

Oh, she was nowhere near as nice as the doll my sister played with. I felt very second-best.

We wondered what to call her. 'Baby' was Mum's suggestion. Then I noticed some writing on the back of her neck.

"What's this? Is this her name?" I asked, as I couldn't read yet.

Mum tried to explain that 'Pedigree' was the brand name or the name of the company that made the doll. I didn't know what that meant, but I liked the sound of it, so the baby doll was called 'Pedigree'. She might not have much else, but she could have a grand name with three syllables.

We played with our dolls and carried them everywhere with us.  We even took them with us when we went on an outing to the beach a few days later. We were inseparable. This was a VERY successful Christmas present.

When we came home from the beach outing, Sue discovered that she didn't have her beautiful doll. She realised that she must have left it at the beach. Dad made the return trip to look for it, but the lovely new doll was not there.

Sue was distraught. Crying and crying. Mum was angry. The money wasted. I was miserable and sad. Our whole household was upset.

I was so sorry for Sue that I offered to give Pedigree to her. She didn't believe me. So I said it again. Really truly. We talked about it some more and sorted out some details so that we finally agreed that Pedigree would be hers, absolutely and completely, until she turned 12 years.

And so it was. Through all the years of our childhood we both played with Pedigree, but when it came down to it, Sue had the final call. I was always aware that I had given her away and that one day she would come back to me. She was mine and also not-mine.

Of course I see that maybe it wasn't so hard for me to give away a doll that I thought was second best. But at that moment in time, she was the best we had. I couldn't bear the thought of being the only one of us with a doll, while Sue had nothing. I just couldn't bear the thought of that gaping hole between us.

Over the years, at dark moments, I have taken some comfort from the generous act of the small child I was then. I know that I have that potential.

When Sue turned 12, Pedigree returned to my ownership. And that was a moment of special tenderness for me. That doll was a bond between us, a key part of our shared history. The day of her return marked a transition out of childhood.

I have always kept Pedigree though she has lived in a box in various cupboards throughout my adult life. Maybe it is time to get her out and rehabilitate her.

Black Patent Leather Shoes

When we were eight or nine years old, our mother gave us 6/- a week for pocket money. That is six shillings. Two shillings a week had to be deposited in our Commonwealth Bank Accounts. This happened on Fridays at school when we took our bank book and a two-shilling coin (a florin) and got a red 2/- stamp in the book. Our deposit books looked just like this, even though this one is twenty years later!

Each week two of the six shillings were spent at the Pictures on Saturday afternoon. It cost 1/9 (one and ninepence) to go to the cinema which left threepence to spend on lollies at half time. We went to the  Saturday afternoon children's matinee that showed cartoons followed by serials like Hopalong Cassidy and Zorro. Of course, there was no television then, nevermind video or DVD. Mum would drop us off at the cinema on her way to play golf, and afterwards we would walk home.

So, although we got 6/- each week, we only had 2/- for ourselves because the rest was either saved or spent keeping us out of trouble on Saturday afternoons. Still, we felt very privileged because none of our friends got pocketmoney at all, or they just got a shilling or two.

We saved most of our weekly two shillings in our lovely Commonwealth Bank money boxes.

I used to think there really was a grand bank building like that somewhere in a big Australian city. The box was fully sealed but Sue and I learned to get the money out by sliding a table knife into the slot and jiggling the box.

I was a good saver because I didn't really see things that I wanted to spend money on. Someone suggested that we might be saving up for treats at the Kingaroy Annual Show. There would be sweet treats and fairground rides. That sounded good, so before Show Day, we used a knife and got all the money out of our moneyboxes. I had a bit over £2 (two pounds) or 40 shillings. At the Show, I didn't see anything I wanted to buy. It seemed like a lot of effort to save the money and I didn't see anything that was worth all that effort. The only thing I did was to treat the family to soft-serve icecreams. I can still see the tall swirl of soft icecream!

In my heart of hearts, I was dreaming about a pair of black patent shoes. They seemed so glamorous! I don't know where I got the idea because I don't think I knew anyone with shoes like this. Maybe I saw them in the shoe shop window or read about them in children's stories. I pictured something like this. Oh my!

After the Kingaroy Show, I discovered that I had almost enough money to buy a pair of black patent leather shoes. Even the words sound lovely... black patent leather shoes. Of course, I talked with Mum about my plan.

She pointed out that the shoes would only fit me for a few months because I was growing. And she asked me to think about where I would wear them. It's true that I didn't have anywhere to wear them, except to church on Sundays. I knew I could just enjoy the smell of new leather and run my finger along the smooth glossy surface. I could wear them around the house after school.

However, I came around to agreeing with her that this wasn't really worth the money.

She pointed out that soon I would need a new pair of school shoes. So when the time came, we went to the shoe shop and I picked out a pair of school shoes with fancy cross-over laces. I paid for them with the pocket money I had saved for a year.

I wore those shoes with special pride and continued to put coins in my Commonwealth Bank money box. I didn't know what I was saving for, but I knew that next year I would let my mother buy my school shoes.

Mrs Stolzenberg's Passionfruit

When I was a girl, about seven or eight years old, I lived in a small country town. We lived in a rented house and our yard had nothing much in it except grass that needed cutting and a woodpile of logs that needed chopping. My mother used the wood for the kitchen stove to make all our meals. My sister and I used the freshly mown grass to make mountains and castles and playhouses. I can still smell it.

Next door to us lived an old, old woman who had a wonderful garden. Mrs Stolzenberg had been a farmer and when her husband died, her son took over the farm and she moved into town. She wore the floral dresses and pinafores of the day as she worked in the house or garden. She even wore them when she chopped the logs for her cooking stove. She was a marvellous old woman.

Mrs Stolzenberg in her front garden

Her front yard was different from everyone else's. Other people had neatly cut lawns and flower beds. The house on the corner had a very modern rockery, but Mrs Stolzenberg's front yard had no grass at all. Instead, the whole front yard was full of garden beds with narrow dirt walkways between them. The garden beds had flowers – roses and petunias and zinnias and hydrangeas and dahlias – like other gardens. But they also had tomatoes and capsicum and lettuce and vegetables mixed in with flowers.

This was most unusual. Looking back, I see that Mrs Stolzenberg ran her garden for her own pleasure, not to please others.

Dahlias

Her back yard was just as productive as the front. She had some lawn under the clothes line, between the tank stand and the woodpile, but the rest of the yard was full of vegetables, right up to the big chook pen that ran along the back fence.

Her big vegetable patch changed throughout the year but there was always something growing there. In winter it was potatoes and carrots and onions. In summer the beans stood tall while the pumpkin and cucumber vines spread out and took over everything nearby.

Cucumber vine

Mrs Stolzenberg was kind to us and sometimes invited my sister and I to visit. She showed us the solemn brown photos of her ancestors that lined the living room walls and she had some cans filled with stones for children to roll noisily along her verandah. She let us play 'beam' with our tennis ball on the wooden arch over her front gate.

When summer came, we were delighted to see that the passionfruit vine that covered the wire of her chook pen sent out a branch along the fence that divided her back yard from ours. We watched as it flowered and the fruit set. There were seven green passionfruit hanging over our side of the fence!

Passionfruit vine

Now, you have to know that my sister and I liked passionfruit, though we had only eaten it a few times. We wondered whether we could have those passionfruit. We knew they belonged to Mrs Stolzenberg because they grew on her vine. But they grew over our side of the fence, so they were in our territory. Besides, we couldn't see how Mrs Stolzenberg was going to reach them, they hung so low down on our side.

So, we decided that when they were purple and ripe, we would pick them and eat them.

Every day we went to check their colour. Even though we knew that passionfruit stayed hard, we couldn't help but give them a little squeeze. And we put our noses close and smelled their fresh green goodness.

At last, tinges of purple began to appear. They would be ready any day now. Soon, we would cut them open and spoon out the yellow insides. Hmmmm....

Delicious juicy passionfruit

Then, one day we went to check them, but they had all gone. Every single one. There were NO passionfruit hanging on our side of the fence. Not one.

What had happened? Where had they gone? Had they fallen? Were they eaten by an animal or the birds? What kind of animal eats passionfruit?

We peered through the fence at the rest of the vine growing over the chook pen. It was loaded with passionfruit that were turning purple. What? It was only our passionfruit that had gone?

And then a thought began to creep into our minds. At first it was just a flicker of disbelief, but then it took hold. We faced the fact that Mrs Stolzenberg had taken them. She had picked them early to prevent us getting them.

We were nearly in tears. It was so unfair. We had waited so patiently. She was so nice to us.

Now we were hot with fury. What to do?

What to do?

Well, it seemed only right that Mrs Stolzenberg should share her passionfruit with us. And she should make up for her meanness.

So, the next day, when we saw that she wasn't in the yard, front or back, we slipped two loose palings up through the wire that held them and we crept through the gap in the fence beside the chook pen. We crept on fours behind the row of beans and we picked every purple passionfruit we could reach!

We loaded the passionfruit in our skirts and crawled back throught the gap in the fence, replaced the fence palings and feasted on passionfruit in the shade of our tank stand.

The girls who liked passionfruit too much

Then we felt guilty. Very guilty. We peered through the fence at the passionfruit vine, now naked except for the high ones around the gate to the chook pen. It was not good. We had done the wrong thing and we were going to be punished. 

We waited to see what would happen. Would Mrs Stolzenberg come and speak to our mother?

Days passed and nothing happened. We began to relax, and life carried on with one big difference. Now we knew a secret way into Mrs Stolzenberg's vegetable garden. We took the opportunity, now and then, to slip through the gap in the fence and munch on a few fresh beans, or a tomato or two.

After all, she was a nice old lady who was kind to us.