The merest of gestures can shatter self-respect. A hand raised against comment; a slight shake of the head. A sardonic grin. Your voice falls on resistant ears. You tell yourself in turns that you deserve better and that you deserve much worse. Your greedy heart wrestles with a crushed soul that huddles in the unlit corner.

Before I moved to California, I got a pedicure every other week at a salon near my home. I can’t recall the name of the technician who provided this service for me but the same woman waited on me every time because I had a regular appointment. Getting this done did not feed my vanity. My particular mobility challenge inhibits certain acts of self-care; I understand how important one’s feet can be to heart-health, but I also acknowledge that a pedicure provides a certain sense of satisfaction.

Within weeks after I moved, I realized that I would have to find a new salon. Although I could count on being home a few times during that first year, once I finished my cases, I would have no need for frequent visits. With the trepidation of one who firmly believes in her unworthiness for such luxuries, I booked an appointment in Lodi and presented myself for scrutiny.

It did not go well.

The lady bent over my feet and exclaimed in unbridled tones that she did not wish to work on a crippled person. In truth, my ten toes have a few knots and gnarls, mostly the unfortunate result of a spastic gait and hard, unyielding shoes. As I struggled to get out of the chair, a woman approached the area and tried to intervene. Eventually, I let myself be persuaded to stay and the nail tech decided to do the pedicure.

Needless to say, I never returned. I tried another place in town to similar ends, although the woman bending over me took my feet in hand to treat without much fanfare. She voiced her complaints in obvious disgust but in a language that I could not understand and over her shoulders to a co-worker, gesturing to her basin and my offending digits. I never went back there, either. I have spent the intervening years tending to my own feet as well as possible, given my limitations. As for my spirit, it seeks other means of solace.

This week, I have come to St. Louis to see family. Yesterday my son spent several hours helping my sister, and I chose to find a nail salon at which to treat myself to a little pampering. The woman to whom I had been assigned gently lifted my feet into the tub of warm and bubbling water. She smiled and nodded, seemingly not versant in my native tongue just as I had no knowledge of hers. For the next hour, that woman — whose name I never learned — restored both my feet and a small but crucial corner of my psyche. She smiled, and nodded, and even gently drew my socks over my ten toes when the pale pink polish had dried.

As I sat outside waiting for my son, I closed my eyes and let the warm rays of the afternoon light kiss the fragile skin across my aging cheek bones. Later, my son, my sister, our friend Penny, and I shared a meal at a nearby pub. On the way home, I glanced westward, at the blazing sunset. I wiggled my toes inside my shoes, and felt a slight stirring of contentment. It cannot last; it doesn’t stand a chance against the onslaught of trouble in my small corner of the even more chaotic world. But in that moment I could savor its deliciousness, and so I did, all the way home to our Airbnb.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

The Missouri Mugwump®

You might notice a vague shimmer in the center of the sunset. I edited out a roof-top on a building in the bottom of the original photo. The image is otherwise unchanged from how my cell phone saw it last evening.