You may have noticed that I’m late in posting this blog. Writing about guilt, Catholic guilt especially, sends me in all different directions: down the serious road (not good since this series is supposed to make people laugh); down the preachy road (nowadays, no one needs another opinionated mouth); or down the explanatory road (not the least bit necessary if you’re Catholic or know anyone who is—and you probably do since there are more than a billion of us running around on this planet).
           As a kid, I grew up feeling guilty when I received a lot of Christmas or birthday gifts, or when I found more Easter eggs than my cousins. I felt guilty when I ate a second cookie. I felt guilty when I had too much fun. As I got older, I felt guilty about questioning some of the teachings of the Catholic church. Off to college, I felt guilty about not going to church. Over the years, I’ve wrangled guilt into a manageable monster.
           Enough said. So I’m going to share with you my singular guilty pleasure: buying, and certainly, wearing shoes. It’s almost an obsession. There’s one woman I thank for that—my beautiful, classy Aunt Evelyn. That woman has shoes. Lot of shoes. And she wears them with style and grace. She recently learned she’s my shoe heroine and that I would be writing about her. I have her blessing.
           Aunt Evelyn is my mother’s youngest sibling, and I was named after her (Kathleen Evelyn Kaska). She’s just a few years older than me. My obsession started one day when we were helping Evelyn and her husband, Danny, move into a new home. I must have been eight years old, but I remember that day as if it were yesterday. My mother and her other sisters huddled together whispering how shameless Evelyn was for owning sixteen pairs of shoes. Feeling for my aunt, I swore I would NEVER own less than sixteen pairs of shoes. I’ve managed that quite well.
           But at times, the guilt still percolates, so I justify another shoe purchase by celebrating something: publication of a new book, running a marathon, the end of the rainy and dark and cold season here in the Pacific Northwest, or the bloom of my rosemary bushes. Sometimes I celebrate waking up in the morning. Reggie (Jackson) says, “You get to a point where you’re happy just to be here.”
           I buy most of my shoes when I’m shopping with my sisters. Those ladies know how to stomp shoe-guilt into the dirt, pierce it with a stiletto heel, and pulverize it. Sometimes we even buy the same pair, slip them on, and then go out and celebrate with a margarita!
           But I really don’t need a lot of motivation. One of my favorite TV shows used to inspire me. I’ve watched all 152 episodes of Elementary, not just because I’m a Sherlock Holmes fan, and Jonny Lee Miller has a 26.2 marathon tattoo, but because Lucy Liu wore the most fabulous shoes. Once, I even went online to see if I could find a similar pair—low and behold, I did! So, as I’m sitting here writing this in my pj’s, I’m wearing those shoes. Do I feel guilty? No. I’m happy! And I think Jesus is happy when I’m happy.
           I’m not going to tell you how many shoes I have in my closet. I’ll just say it’s somewhere between Aunt Evelyn’s sixteen and Imelda Marcus’s 3,000 +.
P.S. To all of you who are enjoying yourselves at WestFest right now (wish I were there), you can read this after you recover.
Watch for the next post. The topic is the Class of 1971.