About Your Shoes...
Ty, my African grey parrot used to pay close attention to my shoes. When I walked in the room he would look first at my feet and then at my face. If I had my hiking boots on we were back to business as usual, but if I had on high heels he was different bird. He would puff up to five times his normal slick size, sway like a snake and growl, “See you later, alligator.” It was intriguing. It was funny. It was my favorite parlor trick. I would demonstrate it over cocktails for friends, modeling various styles of shoes, my high heels always greeted with the same venom. We all laughed except for Ty.
I thought that my bird looked at my shoes to decide if I was leaving and that high heels indicated a long absence. I thought he was mad at me. I didn’t understand yet that an African grey is a perfect fun house mirror, sending your reflection back at you only larger than life.
My world was in chaos the second and third year of Ty’s life. I was running a business that was as ego-bruising as it was time-consuming. My friends can tell you stories that make my years as a process server, mostly serving evictions sound like a great plot to a successful comedy. These were the stories that I told. What I remember now are the stories that I didn’t share, tales that would actually make a good indie movie with a gut wrenching ending. It was cluttered, shadowy and sad where I served papers and what I saw of the world was furious with me.
The hardest days were meeting these people in court, their wrinkled clothes, ragged anger and accusations pitted against my high heels, straightened smile and perfect enunciation. In court, in Rialto, in Mira Loma, Casa Blanca and Edgemont I was the devil.
I hated being the devil. I hated slipping my high heels on to go to court and when I was in a depressed neighborhood even wearing jeans and a boot knife tucked in my Docs, I could still feel those heels rubbing blisters at the base of my toes, clicking on the pavement announcing that I didn’t belong. I put it out of my mind though and told myself I was only working. It was just a job.
Ty saw something that would take me another year to recognize. Ty saw it in my body language and heard it in the inflection of my voice. I hated those high heels and had I listened to my tenacious grey id, I would have realized that my parrot wasn’t mad at me at all, but that when I put on heels I was furious with myself. It was only when I started listening to the parrot listening to me that I realized what I really wanted to do with my life.
And once I started training birds for living, he stopped noticing my shoes.
Catch up on Tuesdays with Ty
Absolutely brilliantly written post R. Wow! Just incredible. I loved it. Insightful, emotional and it put me smack-dab right into your “heels.” Really beautiful.
-Patricia
Great post — I would never in 3,000 years have imagined you as a process server. And yeah, those greys — they’re clever little devils.
Thanks P and M!
awesome . . .
Yup! Yup! my guys know what i’m wearing decides how they say good bye. See ya later i’m going to the store. (hat and sneaks). See ya later (nice clean showered). Be right back. (flip flops and jammies).
[...] to Ty taught me not only what was making me miserable in my life (those damned heels) but also what I loved. (There is nothing better than an early cup of “mmmm, coffee-boo” on [...]
[...] in my immortality and forced me with my head low, back to my father. I nursed my wounds, while Ty judged my shoes and wondered over my grumpiness until I found my [...]