Many years ago, when I was a young girl, I worked downtown in Chicago for summer breaks. I rode the Illinois Central train every morning. My mother also worked downtown full time so we would ride together. Her friends from the train platform became my friends too.

Charlotte was an older woman at seventy or so and still working. Her hair was silver white and she was quite spry. She was a peace maker kind of person and always interfaced between myself and my mother when my mother would be in one of her moods. I always appreciated the fact that she could see who my mother really could be. It helped me get through some difficult moments.

Charlotte would tell stories on the long train ride of her father. She would say how she had several earaches as a child. She would sit on her dad's lap as he smoked his pipe, filled with cherry tabacco. He would blow a bit of the warm smoke into her ear and she swore to me it made her feel better. She always talked with deep love of her father and I admired that. 

Her only daughter was her precious princess. She adored her. When she grew up she married someone who she loved deeply but Charlotte had her doubts about him. They were very happy and were excited to be wed. The wedding took place at their small church and the reception was held there too. It was in the sixties. After their marriage they moved to an apartment near O'Hare airport and worked very hard. They wanted to build a solid future. They decided to work at night at some airport job because it payed very well. Charlotte did not approve.

One early morning they were heading back to their apartment after their shift was over. There was an accident and her beloved daughter was killed. Her young husband survived but was more than devasted. They had only been married a few weeks. 

It  was an inconsolable death, as so many are. The young man was lost and Charlotte hardened her heart. She blamed him for the accident, putting it squarely on his ambition and his desire to get ahead. She found no peace. She spurned his every attempt to seek consolation and rejected him as a member of the family. The family that had only weeks before embraced him as a son, rejected him as someone who was directly responsible for their daughter's death. It was not fair, I could see that even at my age, but Charlotte, who was so calm and balanced, could not see that even more than a decade later.

Is there more of a reason? I am not sure now and was not sure then. Charlotte was so bitter and angry that it destroyed her own marriage. She ended it by divorcing her husband.

This gentle white haired lady, who looked more like the old Queen mother, could not be capable of such anger, yet she was.

She was always nice and loving to me. She seemed to get along with everyone. She was also very kind to my mother. She turned out to be one of  my mother's very good friends in old age, she was there for her when my father died. She was capable of infinate understanding. They went on a few senior trips together and often talked, I think she had a very calming effect on my mother.

Once we were visitng Charlotte at her home in Riverdale. It was cute little cottage.  She walked us around. She showed us her daughter's canopy bed. I loved canopy beds and thought this was so pretty. I wondered if she had thought of selling it or taking it all down. I almost said something, but even as a young college kid, I had the idea that might have been the wrong thing to say.

Moments later I was very glad I had said nothing, nothing but praise of the room's beauty. She opened the closet and there were a few things there, just being stored. She reached down and picked up a pair of shoes. She held them in an odd way, almost caressing them.

Charlotte told me they were her daughter's shoes. I gasped silently and recognized that she was caressing them. She told me that she had worn them the night of the accident. She said it was all she had left, all that she had that belonged to her daughter. I was immediately very sad. I had asked her why she kept them.

She spoke to me softly and told me  it was about the imprint of her precious princess's foot in the shoes. I looked at the shoes again. They were a light brown, slightly pointed ballet shoe, and clearly the perspiration imprint of a foot was inside each. I could see how personal this was, what it represented to Charlotte. If she held these shoes, her daughter was not dead, just away, she might come back to put her shoes on again. Charlotte would keep them until she did.

Copyright 2011 by SheilaTGTG55