She laughed as she jumped over seams in the granite flooring, stealing a moment of joy from the somber occasion as only a child can do. One two, buckle my shoe. Her shoes clacked against the floor as she began an improvised game of hopscotch, and I remembered.
“I can do it myself,” she said, pushing her mother’s hands aside. She sat on the floor, wiggling her left foot halfway into her right sandal. The sandal had a strap for the heel, and two for the rest of the foot. She was curling and uncurling her toes, struggling to tuck them under the final, angled strap. So far, she wasn’t having any success, nor did she show any interest in getting help. If the sandal had been on the right foot, she probably could have gotten it on just fine. But on the wrong foot, the angle of the strap was all wrong. As it stood, half her toes landed on top of the strap, and the other half just didn’t seem long enough to reach under that same blasted strap. A few more moments passed as she tried rotating the sandal around on her heel, but with the first strap over her foot, there wasn’t a lot of room for adjustment. Continue reading “Hopscotch”