Chicken Slippers

I was in a rush. I had 30 minutes to get groceries on my lunch break so that I wouldn’t have to stop after work. I strategically bobbed and weaved through the holiday aisles stuffed with seasonal nonsense, organized in a fashion I can only describe as a hoarder’s wet dream. I must have swore in my head at everyone in the store at least eleven times before I got hit by an invisible wall. Inertia threw me into the very thing that stopped me like a cold, wide-palmed slap in the face. I stared in disbelief. I couldn’t help but marvel at the treasure before me: chicken slippers.

Fucking chicken slippers. There they were, a real life ghost from my childhood. Something between my mother and me and no one else. Every year, even in my sour teens and resentful twenties, I would listen to the chicken slipper story. It was short and sweet, “Emmy, what do you want for Christmas this year?” And a three-year-old me paused, mid kool-Aid mustache and said, “chicken slippers,” before scampering off. She thought that was just the most precious thing and hearing her tell the story every year like it was the first time some kid plucked an idea from their imagination was endearing, even when I didn’t want it to be.

I wonder if anyone noticed the abruptness of my full stop. My deep-seated shame about showing emotions flared up and I was tangled in anxiety. Do I panic? Do I leave? Should I just fall apart right here in the shoe section? I wondered if there was someone sitting in front of a surveillance camera, noticing a quick movement that suddenly stopped and they became curious. I’m sure they would have seen my eyes watering while I looked at tiny stuffed chickens made for feet. I know they would have seen me reach for my phone and then take a long pause before dialing because the one person I wanted to call is dead.

I jammed my phone back in my pocket like I was mad at it and snatched the chicken slippers off the end cap. I plucked through the store with anger and resentment. Why the fuck now? Why didn’t she get to see these? A cold, dirty tornado of history swirled up, ready to take me away. Remember when she chased me barefoot down the street screaming because I didn’t say good morning to her piece of shit husband? Remember that time that she prioritized drugs over lice treatment? Remember that one time she…And I just want to forget it all and have a mom again. Go ahead and tell me to stop mumbling, tell me to sit up straight, I need it.

I don't remember very much of the good times with my mom now but I know I felt lucky and loved her a lot when I was a kid. I remember her cooking, trying to invent the perfect cheesecake recipe. She had a vast collection of Converse in colors and patterns I would have never guessed existed. I recall that she was very technologically inclined and freakishly smart. In the nineties, she listened to Stone Temple Pilots’ Core album on a loop for months. She painted her nails black all year long. She was humorous and always got my jokes. But at some point she wasn’t safe anymore. And then she got sick in the middle of rebuilding her life.

My mom’s illness started slowly — cumulative, sneaky — and then a quick river of decay. She was a strong, distinctive, intelligent nurse in her forties, with a red Mini Cooper to take her to her important job and back to her nice house — but all she did was sleep. Then her heart stopped working and she got a pacemaker. My mother gained a robot but lost all her confidence. She lost her ability to mask reality and hold a cup. And then she was just gone — abruptly. It felt sharp. It felt loud. Disruptive. I screamed, I bent over from the physical pain of emotion, I cried in my great grandmother’s lap, and I took Benadryl until I couldn’t feel feelings anymore.

I made a conscious decision when she died. I had a whole conversation with myself about how I was planning to survive the next several months, how to look at this situation as her gaining freedom and not losing life. That conversation led to the consensus between my heart and my head, I would make the choice to get out of bed everyday and I would keep doing it until I stopped noticing that I was doing it. “Do it until it’s just part of the day.” And I did it. And I keep doing it. I just keep getting up and moving, even when the moving looks painful or like I’m distracting myself. I’ve been moving like a bustling train for the last eleven years until these fucking chicken slippers knocked me off the rails.

I don’t remember the rest of my trip through the store. “What the hell did I go in there for in the first place?” I went back to work with chicken slippers under my right arm. I couldn’t leave The Precious. I felt like I was in shock and I was annoyed at myself for not being able to control it. I can’t cry about any of this unless I am alone or under the influence. All my stability around this one subject — wiped out by fucking slippers that look like something a robot claw gives you if you feed it money.

It took a long time before I could bring the slippers into the house. Even longer still before I carried them upstairs. Now they sit in a bag on top of the dresser by my desk. I get to look over at them whenever I want. I get to keep them. I get to think of that three-year-old and her pretty mom at Christmas, with their whole lives still ahead of them. I get to look at them and feel the hope and love my younger self felt for my mother. Sometimes I feel like if I stare at them long enough, she’ll appear — like a Sesame Street version of Bloody Mary. She’d think that’s funny. And maybe that’s enough.