(Reprinted from Wednesday Magazine, December 1997)

Those Crazy Christmas Slippers

            I guess I knew back in l948 I was marrying into a big family but I didn’t realize how big until that first Atkinson Christmas.

            I was already feeling bogged down with a new baby and learning how to cook on a wood range and hanging the wash out to dry on a clothesline that seemed like it was always full.  Now I had to try to figure out how to come up with Christmas presents for my husband’s brothers, sisters, in-laws and kids.

            It wasn’t that I felt obligated to but as Charlie pointed out, they would all be bringing presents for us.

            The reality was we could not afford to buy gifts for everyone.  We barely had enough money to go around for monthly bills and groceries.  There was precious little left over.  However, I was a pretty good seamstress and I already had a lot of remnants lying around.   All I needed to do was come up with an idea.

            Slippers!  Those little soft scuffs with the quilted soles to pad about between bed and bath and kitchen in the mornings was the perfect solution..

            I was so proud of myself for coming up with such a great idea, I set about cutting patterns for several sizes of feet, quilting the soles, sewing the tops to the bottoms and trimming them all with matching tassels.

            I had that little old hand-me-down sewing machine screaming until I had almost completed the task.  And it had only taken me two weeks.  Then I began pairing them up to make sure I had the correct match for left and right.  Only—something was very, very wrong!  I had 20 slippers—all for the right foot!

            Charlie came home from work and caught me sitting in the middle of the bedroom floor crying.  He said, “It’s okay, honey, we’ll just go out and buy more material to make the left ones.”

              Poor lamb. He didn’t realize the completed right foot slippers were all of a patterned print.  I was sure I got the last of the fabric months ago when I purchased it for another job.

            I started freaking out. It was God’s fault! If He had only made everyone’s feet perfect rectangles we’d all be better off.  Our shoes would be interchangeable so we could wear the soles down evenly.  They would be easier to store.  Shoe manufacturers (ahem, like me) wouldn’t waste a whole lot of time making too many for the right or left-foot.

            I was living in a nightmare for a couple of days until I figured out I could remove the tops of half the slippers and sew them to the bottoms of those soles.  I was so proud of myself for solving the dilemma I fairly raced through the rest of that year’s Christmas preparations.  It wasn’t until Christmas morning I discovered I’d mislabeled all the gift tags.  But it all turned out okay.  A lot of trading went on for a few minutes while everyone found the correct size.

            I never tried to mass-produce anything for any reason after that Christmas debacle. Except maybe Christmas letters and I believe I learned my lesson on that one as well!