Pedicures

I went for a pedicure today (5/15). It was wonderful. The woman, who I am ashamed to say I don’t know her name, scrubbed and soaked and sloughed everything from just under my knee to the tips of my toes. I picked my favorite color red, and she even put a cute design I my big toes (her idea, no extra charge). I’ve never gotten a design it looks really great. This is the third pedicure I’ve ever gotten.

The first pedicure was a very uncomfortable experience for me. It felt good and didn’t felt good all at the same time. Instead of relaxing and letting the massage chair pound away at my back, I sat up very straight. I just couldn’t relax. That’s about all I remember. The last two times were nothing like that.

I think I like this salon because there are children, anywhere between one and three of them. Young children. They are very cute little girls. There was only one when I got my pedicure today. She had short shoulder length black hair with bangs. She wore a little girl’s pink skirt, with ruffles and a t-shirt. As I had my feet worked on she snuggled up to the pedicurist, even ignoring the little boy who was there with his mother who wanted to show her his toy truck.

I’ve never been able to figure out who, out of everyone who works at the salon, the different children belong to. Who ever is free seems to take care of the kids. There is some English spoken by the staff, but not much. I’ve never been able to distinguish a word that sounds like Mom, or Dad. I believe I know who the father of one of the girls are, he had told me once that he had gotten a Cornel sweatshirt from his daughter because, after receiving it and a baseball hat from her cousin, who is a student there, the sweatshirt was to big for her. The oldest of the girls, who reads The Boxcar Children ( I saw her with the book), anyway she has a Cornel baseball hat.

As the little girl in pink snuggled with the woman, I wondered, will she resent her family someday for all there hard work. Will she be an angry teenager who doesn’t understand why they kept her so close. Why she spent her childhood in a salon, while her nanny raised contemporaries, had lessons. Will she be embarrassed by their accents, or even limited English, as the case is with the pedicurist (explaining why I don’t know here name).

Right now there was so much love as the little one cuddled up to the woman. During breaks between customers, I’ve seen the woman take the children to CVS. I don’t know for a fact that she doesn’t say, “No”. I only know that the junk food that the children come back with, leaves me to think that the “no’s” are limited. This is obviously a loving extended family who are making their way in a new country. I hope they stay as happy during the little pink girls teenage years, from experience they are a dozy.