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July Stories: World Tale: Shoes (China)
How do we decide what matters? The stories, Minerva, Snowshoeing, and Oranges, reveal the importance of paying attention.
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 There was once a man who wanted to buy himself a pair of shoes. He measured his feet, then wrote the measurements down. When he got to the market, he discovered he had left the measurements at home.
After he found the shoes he wanted he went home to get the measurements. When he returned, the marketplace was closed. He could not buy the shoes.  The woman who became my mother-in-law, Minerva Evangeline Cross King, was a tall, stately woman, born in Main, brought up to do her duty, to be kind and caring. Showing emotion was frowned upon. When my boyfriend introduced me to her, she said, “You aren’t the woman I would have chosen for my son, but you will be the mother of my grandchildren and we will get along.” Compared to my mother’s manipulation, this felt like a breath of fresh air.
 As the four of us put on our snowshoes, I appreciated the cloudy day, cool air, and crisp crust covering about five inches of snow. A perfect day to snowshoe. There was no actual trail so we followed the leader as he made his way across the countryside, intent on a vista about three miles from the trailhead.
 I enjoy eating an orange for breakfast. One morning I realized I had eaten the last of my oranges. I couldn’t drive to the store to buy more because my car was in the shop. The mechanic had told me it would take at least three days to get the parts and fix the problem.
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July 2025
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Nancy King is a widely published author and a professor emerita at the University of Delaware, where she has taught theater, drama, playwriting, creative writing, and multidisciplinary studies with an emphasis on world literature. She has published seven previous works of nonfiction and five novels. Her new memoir, Breaking the Silence, explores the power of stories in healing from trauma and abuse. Her career has emphasized the use of her own experience in being silenced to encourage students to find their voices and to express their thoughts, feelings, and experiences with authenticity, as a way to add meaning to their lives.
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