Cute Shoes

My Minnesota friends will know what I’m talking about when I say Thursdays on First.

This is a street fair every Thursday in the summer months in Rochester. They close down First Street to downtown traffic and the businesses set up tents outside their stores to sell their wares. Once a week in the summer, it’s a whole day of music and artists and food, and it still goes on today.

Back in the day I was working for a restaurant and we’d set up our tent and sell all day in the heat, the rain, the wind--whatever came our way. I worked the morning shift, so it was my job to get everything we needed out into the street: serving cooler on wheels, wine barrels, bar top, signage, our bright red tent, propane, hand washing station, cash register, food containers, etc. I had a couple of wheeled carts and I was a wizard at stacking them.

The restaurant owner, Tessa, would help me get the tent/booth set up and then the chef would join us and we’d man the booth all day. We’d sell, make change, serve drinks, and Chef would make paella (a Spanish rice dish with saffron to give it golden color) that we’d dish up in Chinese food containers. Man, it was delicious. And having three of us there meant one of us could act as a runner, fetching needed items from the restaurant while the other two cooked and served. 

Street Paella

My shift was 8-4, and second shift ran from 4-dark. As such, I could park in my usual parking garage at 8 a.m., no problem, but I couldn’t get out at 4 p.m., not by a long shot due to the crowds of people on foot. So instead, I walked to work on Thursdays. I’d trek the mile from my house to downtown, through the neighborhoods, looking at the houses as I went by, listening to the birds chirp, drinking a travel mug of tea as I went, feeling the cool morning air--because it doesn’t warm up until 10 a.m. in Minnesota, even in summer. I really enjoyed those morning walks. My walks home were different but just as fun. They were exhausting and I walked slowly, but the bright side was that I liked the feeling of being tired from being on my feet all day.

As an aside, let me tell you that people tend to question my sanity at always looking on the bright side. I’m not crazy. (Not completely, anyway.) In reality, I’m very, very human, but I’ve been through a handful of events over the years, each of which brought me to a crossroads where I realized I was being given a choice. What I’m about to tell you is one of those crossroads events.

I remember one particularly hot Thursday that I was just not in the mood for hungry people and their drama when a woman walked by, dressed nicely in her clean office clothes and heels, hair and sunglasses just so. By contrast, I was sweating in my t-shirt and athletic shorts, envious of people who worked in air conditioning at that moment and didn’t have paella spilled on them. I remember thinking, “Oh, look at you and your perfect hair. I bet you even smell nice, like perfume, not food and street dirt.” I was pretty sour. But Tessa beside me saw the woman, too, and whispered to herself, “Oh, cute shoes.”

Cute shoes? I’m having an internal meltdown here and all Tessa can say is cute shoes?

And suddenly: Cue the crossroads.

You know those moments, especially in dreams, when you can process a lot of thoughts simultaneously? That’s what I did here. I spent the next five seconds itemizing the various reasons why I was mad and every reason why it was this lady’s fault, and I imagined holding onto my fiery grudge and how comforting that was. And then I spent about two seconds imagining that I let it all go and how alarming that I’d have nothing to cling to, and how light that would feel.

Those of you who’ve been reading me a while know my love of Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, a book about a platoon of Vietnam soldiers and the things they carried, both essential and chosen memorabilia items, physical and emotional. And: Each physical item is listed with its weight. Think about that. What do you carry? From purse and pocket items to friends and love and family members both here and gone, anger, resolve, passion… What do you carry, and how does it carry you? O’Brien’s themes show up in my head pretty often. He’s just brilliant.

For those of you new to reading me, Spoiler Alert: I learned how to course-correct. And I never forgot that lesson on choices. Seven seconds after landing at the crossroads I said, “You know, Tessa, those really are cute shoes.”