When I was a little girl, no more than 6 or 7 years old, I had an experience that I would only much later understand to be pivotal in my life. What was once a confusing experience that turned into a random memory, years later became a message … a message I assumed I had simply misinterpreted for decades.
Looking back, and now a mother myself, I can see now that I was an unusually contemplative little girl. I was solitary, though not without friends and playmates … more that I just knew I needed periods of solitude. When I wasn't playing outside with the neighborhood kids, I could be found in my room, happily alone, reading, or sometimes, just thinking. I was content with my own company, for it was then I could really think.
I have no recollection of what transpired leading up to this random event, now so indelibly burned into my memory. I remember I was in the backseat of my family's wood paneled station wagon with my parents and siblings, parked in my aunt's driveway, waiting to pick someone up. It was dark out, and raining. The windshield wipers were on, and the rhythm of their soft swish, swish thump was off-beat to the Neil Diamond song playing on the radio The lights were on outside the garage where we were parked, turning my window into a mirror of sorts.
I remember looking into my make-shift mirror, staring into my own eyes unrelentingly, much like a child repeats a word over and over again until that word loses all meaning and begins to sound like nonsense. Staring into my eyes, I was pondering my existence, wondering why I was here, what I would be when I grew up, and what it was I was put on earth to do.
While I was staring into the reflection of my eyes, transfixed by the endless pools of infinity they became that somehow looped back into me, I was overcome with a sudden, intense, yet absolute certainty that when I grew up, I would do something significant … something big. I had no idea what it was … just the unshakable knowledge that it was absolutely going to happen.
I more or less forgot about the experience entirely until a few years later when I was in the 6th or 7th grade and one of my gym teachers made a comment that brought me right back to that rainy night. Mrs Kaufman was young, a new teacher, and everything a pre-teen girl aspired to be. Petite and pretty, with waist length golden brown hair and a perpetually sunny disposition, she was someone we all looked up to and wanted to be like. She and I must have been chatting, for I remember we were on the sidelines of a game, cheering the players on when she turned to me and said, "Someday I expect to hear great things about you. You are going to do great, important things with your life … I just know it."
Stunned into silence by her comments, I remember thinking two things simultaneously … namely, "Wow … Mrs Kaufman is really clueless," along with, "She's just saying that to build up the confidence of the little girl that stutters." Because that's who I was, how I identified myself. Didn't she know that, couldn't she see it? Surely she couldn't confuse me with the brash and popular cheerleaders, or the girls with perfect hair, perfect clothes, perfect everything. I was the opposite of all that, the little girl who heard "You can't because …." with the unspoken message being, "… because you stutter." Later, after hearing it often enough, the message turned into " I can't … because I stutter."
But while I thought and felt all those accompanying feelings simultaneously, I knew instantly that her comment was somehow related to that rainy night in the car, for it slammed me back in time, back into the backseat of that station wagon with the same dizzying force as any time machine. The comment was related somehow to that long ago memory. I just didn't know how, or why.
Then, as it always seems to, time passed, and the two random memories, connected together by a wisp of a thread, nothing more than a vague feeling that they were connected, faded. I went to high school and college, then later nursing school.
Occasionally I would remember the two separate instances and struggle to figure out how and why I knew they were connected, but the busy-ness of life would intervene, and they'd get buried back in my subconscious, where, frankly, I felt they belonged.
More years passed, and I married and became a mother. Strangely enough, the memory of that deep flash of knowledge that overcame me that rainy night, the feeling of absolute certainty, along with my gym teacher's words, popped up with confusing frequency. Like persistent little bubbles in a glass of champagne, it was almost as if they were struggling to be acknowledged, not to be denied. When this would happen, I'd just think to myself, "Well ... I was obviously wrong."
I had to be wrong. Everything I thought about that experience was clearly 100% wrong. While being a mother is arguably the most important job in the world, it just didn't fit within the meaning of the memory of that night. And although it is extraordinary to bring a child into the world, let's face it … it's common place. I knew what I felt, this certainty I couldn't shake, was something more than simply motherhood … but at this point in my life, I felt the opportunity for it to actually happen had, sadly, long passed.
That was a bitter pill to swallow. I was in my mid-40's at this point, and had no special skills or talents that set me apart, nothing that would point to doing anything out of the ordinary, much less extraordinary. I mean, I was happy … I had a great life, for all intents and purposes … the American Dream. I just couldn't shake a nagging feeling that I didn't live up to that shining potential that seemed such a certainty so long ago.
When the idea for Fabulous Shoe Night hit me (for indeed, it hit me, like the ton of bricks I became when I fell in the Bellevue the very day the idea struck), I had an inkling that perhaps this might be what I felt so long ago. Even though the idea wasn't yet fully formed, I sensed the potential, the specialness and outright magic … the ability to, if properly executed, change the world.
Over time, and through much trial and error, Fabulous Shoe Night became what it is today. While I don't think we've even begun to scratch the surface of all the good we can do in the world, I know, again with absolute certainly, that even if we never add another chapter or bring the FSN concept to another state, what we are doing is extraordinary.
In 12 short, whirlwind months, we have established 19 chapters in 7 states. That in itself is extraordinary. Add to that that I'm writing approximately $10,000 worth of checks, proceeds from our events, to local charities every month. And yet still, all of our growth has been completely organic. I literally tremble to think of what will happen when Fabulous Shoe Night goes "viral."
So, while I ride this wild ride I'm on, bringing Fabulous Shoe Night and all it's shining potential to help others in the world, my chapter leaders and I go about our daily lives … raising children, working, doing what every other woman does to fulfill the many roles of a woman. But we are also helping raise money and awareness for local charities in our communities one Fabulous Shoe Night event at a time. We are bringing women together at fun social events, highlighting local venues and businesses, raising significant money for local charities, together.
It's all just blissfully, extraordinarily ordinary.
“Life’s best coaches are those who believe in you and your potential, sometimes even before you do.” ~~ Lorii Myers
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For information about Fabulous Shoe Night events or staring a chapter in your area, visit www.fabulousshoenight.com .
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