Karen's mother had bought the first shoes for her daughter in the mid-seventies. Karen's mother was, more than she would have admitted, into disco music, glitter and shiny things, into Marc Bolan who would wear more make up than she ever would dare to. When her daughter Karen was born, her first child and -- what she didn't know at that time -- her only child, she thought, just silently for herself, of her daughter as a future disco star. Someone who would travel the world, meet people like Marc Bolan or Brian Connolly, who would be a part of the glitter and the shiny world and not only watch it from outside. She couldn't tell anyone about this, not her -- at best -- boring husband, not her parents-in-law, who had already been concerned when she once in her life had showed up with a stylish hat. Women don't wear hats!, her mother-in-law had said, except for the Queen, and -- scrutinizing her daughter-in-law from her head to her toes -- she obviously wasn't a queen. Her mother-in-law had grabbed the hat and thrown it onto the sideboard, gasping with contempt, and had made it very clear that she had to follow their rules, since they were living in their house.
Whenever Karen's mother would look at these tiny patent leather shoes in her later years, they reminded her of a world that had no cracks in it yet. A world she couldn't remember.
First part of what I call #picstories -- a series of very short stories behind a picture/photo