The Weekend of the Happy Feet, Day Two

From Heidi, by Johanna Spryri, 1955, a favorite childhood book of mine. When Heidi was first led up the Alps that very first summer morning . . .

"she wore two or three dresses, one over the other, and a big red cotton handkerchief around her kneck. Her feet seemed lost in the heavy hobnailed shoes as she made her hot and laborious way up the mountain."

And then she met the young goatherd Peter, an 11-year-old boy, and she

“looked at Peter, who jumped about without any difficulty in his bare feet and light trousers, then at the goats with their small, slender legs climbing still more easily over bushes and stones and steep crags.

"Suddenly she sat down on the ground and pulled off her shoes and stockings. She stood up again, took off her thick, red neckerchief, unfastened her Sunday frock, quickly took that off, and began to unhook her everyday dress. This she had worn under the other, to save her Aunt Dete the trouble of carrying it. . . . She laid her clothes in a neat little pile on the ground and hurried up the mountain, jumping and climbing after the goats as easily as Peter did.

“Heidi was beside herself with delight. . . . All around them were the nodding bluebells, the shining golden roses, the red centauries, and everywhere the sweet fragrance of the brown blossoms and the spicy wild plum. Everthing was so lovely--so lovely.”


When we first bought our little cottage in St. Paul, the former owners, an elderly couple who were childless and loved their pet dog and their flower gardens with passion, used to drive by the house nostalgically in the evenings. It was a terribly tough time in my life. Full of everything, yes, but also completely and overwhelmingly draining. My kids were little, my job was insane, my husband was on the road quite a bit. There was no extra money and barely enough time. And then I killed the flower garden. It died of neglect. Those beautiful tiger lilies. Died. The vibrant irises. Died. I didn't even know what was dying out there, I was so busy. One morning, kids in tow, I opened the front door to head to day care, school, and work, and the door fell off in my hands. I just laid it to the side, propping it against the siding near the stoop, and marched on. How was I to know the garden flowers were dying? And then I heard the dear former owners, Norm and Elizabeth, stopped driving by. She was sick and he was frail and I imagined they were heartbroken over the loss of the house and the flowers they had tended for over 47 years.

And then I had a little shutdown myself. (I write a bit about it here.) I was walking into work with a million things pressing on my mind and I was late but had decided to park near the Metrodome to save six bucks a day in parking fees, and it was cold and I, too, wore heavy hobnailed shoes, and I started to feel faint and weak and then by the time I got to the 5th Street building I could hardly breathe, everything was closing in on me so fast.

I don't know. We all have those terrible times in our lives that in the end become the pivotal points, the tipping points, those bad times that prompt us to seek higher ground and commit to living the good life.

I took a little time off work and everyone around me, even my father--the driven one!--told me I had no hobbies, I needed to learn to relax. My friend Carie brought me needlepoint, my brother bought me pastels and a lovely sketchbook, my mother tried to get me to refinish a chair. And one morning when I was all alone, I sat out barefooted in the backyard, and the cardinals were singing and the doves were cooing so I went into the house to fish out the binoculars. I brought them out and sat in a chair and for the longest time I tracked all that city wildlife. I looked over at those sad little flowerbeds and then I just kneeled into them and began digging and I stayed in the beds all day.

And it has been lovely--so lovely--ever since.