Workin’ Feet
Lucia’s precious babyfeet have become workin’ feet. Yesterday, when I put her in a stroller for a walk, I noticed a red welt on the big toe of her left foot—a blister. That’s the toe she uses to push off in her non-crawl crawl—and her maneuverings around the apartment have finally taken a toll. Her smooth, perfect little babyfeet are no longer just cute, extra appendages, there for singing songs about. (“Hey feet / Hey barefeet / Hey little feeties now / Hey barefeet / Hey toes / Ten little toes / Ten little toes / On two barefeet”—that’s for you, Beth and Nate, in case you’d managed to get that ditty out of your heads by now.) Now they’re workin’ feet, propelling her from bedroom to living room to kitchen to hallway, to the forbidden bathroom and the corner of the hallway where I try to put the stroller with its filthy, forbidden wheels (her current Holy Grail) out of her grasp.
Today we met Barbra for lunch in midtown—we walked there to meet her, striding through tourist throngs and hideous sidewalk-smells and blazing-hot pavement. What an awful part of the city—though it did remind me of a time long ago during graduate school (could it really be eight years? nine?) when I worked nearby, back in my executive assistant temp days. Ah, memories. Time well-spent in a stable of seven assistants for a CEO and his wife, transcribing voicemails about the urgency of finding fish forks in a discontinued style of cutlery and stepping on and off a digital scale to “set it” and typing up correspondence from their Maltese to other dogs. I don’t think of these things very often, but when I do, they always make me laugh.
Anyhoo, harbored from the crowds at a nice outdoor table at Maison, Lucia was happy as a clam in her high chair. A French waiter approached and crouched beside her. “Bonjour,” he said. “Bonjour, bonjour.” He told her she was beautiful. “Will you come to Paris with me?” he asked. I nearly choked on my sandwich. “Give her another twenty-five years,” I said, but what I really meant was thirty-five, forty-five, fifty-five—an ankle homing-bracelet and an online PhD suddenly seemed like a pretty good idea.
Today we met Barbra for lunch in midtown—we walked there to meet her, striding through tourist throngs and hideous sidewalk-smells and blazing-hot pavement. What an awful part of the city—though it did remind me of a time long ago during graduate school (could it really be eight years? nine?) when I worked nearby, back in my executive assistant temp days. Ah, memories. Time well-spent in a stable of seven assistants for a CEO and his wife, transcribing voicemails about the urgency of finding fish forks in a discontinued style of cutlery and stepping on and off a digital scale to “set it” and typing up correspondence from their Maltese to other dogs. I don’t think of these things very often, but when I do, they always make me laugh.
Anyhoo, harbored from the crowds at a nice outdoor table at Maison, Lucia was happy as a clam in her high chair. A French waiter approached and crouched beside her. “Bonjour,” he said. “Bonjour, bonjour.” He told her she was beautiful. “Will you come to Paris with me?” he asked. I nearly choked on my sandwich. “Give her another twenty-five years,” I said, but what I really meant was thirty-five, forty-five, fifty-five—an ankle homing-bracelet and an online PhD suddenly seemed like a pretty good idea.
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