Patricia Spears Jones
Hanging with the Big Girls in My Traveling Shoes by Patricia Spears Jones
Last year when I was invited to receive an award from the Black Students
Association at Rhodes College as part of my 40th College Reunion, I was
freaked out. I had a few weeks earlier been to Arkansas to bury my
mother and what little money I had was gone. But to be honored as a
Distinguished Alumni for a group I helped to organize decades before was
an important opportunity I could not say no to. A very good friend, a
wonderful novelist and elder heard about my honor and knew my
predicament. She took me to a shoe store on Broadway and let me choose a
pair of beautiful, well made dress shoes. I would not look like a poor
poet at such a gathering. They are in a way my “traveling shoes,” the
ones for readings and special events: memorials, weddings, high teas.
They are the shoes I wore to A Celebration of Dr. Maya Angelou at Riverside Church on September 12. Continue reading the rest of Patricia Spears Jones' blog here at The Poetry Foundation!
