As I sit here, staring out the window, I notice two things. First; the “behind-us-neighbors” have painted their house a lovely sage green which  blends into the cedar trees between our yards and doesn’t demand my attention like it did when it was a two-story, cardboard-beige box. I still wish we had more privacy, but this is so much less visually-intrusive.  Good job, neighbors, good job!

And second; I have an old Supercuts ad running through my head on an endless loop! It features Albert Einstein and his notoriously wild hair, and proclaims, “A bad haircut can make anyone look stupid!”  They would know… 

I fell in love with Albert, all over again, when I recently saw a photo of him on a beach in Europe in 1933. His pose was reminiscent of the old “bathing beauties” we’ve seen. What really tugged at my heartstrings were his sandals. People didn’t walk around barefoot the way we do now, they wore shoes to stroll the beaches, and I was most struck by how feminine I felt these shoes were.  A beautiful mind, and pretty ankles! I remembered growing up seeing men in Fisherman’s sandals (which I love to this day) but I’d never seen anything like these.

In high-school, in the 1960’s, my friends Rosie and Joachim moved here with their Mom and Dad and Oma (grandma) from Germany. I loved going to their house to visit – everything was at once both more formal, and more casual, than at my house. For instance, breakfast at my house was a kind of  free-for-all with two adults and five children. Chaos!  But at Joe and Rosie’s house it was a mellow affair. Soft-boiled eggs in egg cups (which I had to learn how to eat), cloth napkins, and a basket full of freshly made toast and rolls with soft butter and plum preserves (which I’d also never had before, grape jelly ruled supreme in our house). Everyone talked to each other about their week, and everyone helped clean up afterwards without being asked, although Oma, in German, always said she could manage. She’d wave her hands to shoo us out of the kitchen, go on!

Joe and his Dad were rebuilding a car, ( a 1957 Chevy Belair) which Rosie and I loved to sit and watch, or hand them tools and ask questions. They both wore athletic undershirts ( called “wife beaters” these days) and  brown Fisherman sandals.  Joe wore his with bare feet, but his Dad wore his with black socks. I noticed that a lot of my friend’s fathers  from Italy, Germany, Poland, and Greece did the same.  Try as I might, I cannot remember what my Dad wore with shorts in the summertime (I remember that he liked to sunbathe, and used Ban de Soleil orange tanning gelee), but I can’t remember what he wore on his feet…I will have to ask him later.

I went online to see if I could find a pair of sandals like Einstein’s for myself, and I got pretty close!  Now when it warms up, I need to get a sexy spray tan, and I’ll be ready to walk a mile in Einstein’s shoes! 

XODonna