Can a Pair of Purple Velvet Boots With Upturned Toes Turn Pain into Humor? I say YES! (It’s Worth a Try, Right?)

To overcome the slings and arrows of life, (and when I say slings and arrows, I mean slings and arrows with nuclear bombs attached to them because dealing with the trauma of death and divorce often feels like complete annihilation, I recommend finding humor and if you can’t find it, make it. Woo! I’m breathless from that awesome run-on sentence! Find humor every day, and if you can’t find it, create it.

Here is the list I have written on my bathroom mirror:

Make mischief.

Be cheeky.

Buy a pair of purple velvet shoes with upturned toes.

Work in a wand shop that smells of whiskey and absinthe.

Prance like a unicorn… But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I try to find humor and make mischief every day, most obviously in the way I dress, and I’ve found that the more pain I’m in, the more colorful I dress. It’s almost like magical thinking: if I’m wearing bright colors and sparkling boots, I will feel bright and sparkling. Weirdly, it often works.

I’ve always had a unique sense of style. I remember in high school that I never liked to wear the same thing twice. My personal style theme was “wildly romantic” and I would look at Betsey Johnson in Vogue or watch a Marilyn Monroe movie, and I would model an outfit based on that inspiration. After watching Mary Poppins, I remember going into my mother’s closet, pulling out a red floral “moo-moo”, which is what she called her loose-fitting dresses worn on Sundays after church, so she could eat as much as she wanted for Sunday dinners and not worry about loosening her belt. I put on the “moo-moo” and tied up the back with a ribbon to make a bustle, similar to the Edwardian dresses worn by Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins, and I wore it to school. A while later, my fashionista sister, Marlina, bought a Norma Kamali dress made of brocade that was shaped like a Mary Poppins Edwardian-style dress I strived to create. I begged to borrow the dress and wore it to church with a big hat and a long veil over my face. I was fifteen.

My parents found me very entertaining and to their credit, never tried to squelch my creative expression. I would climb into the car in my outrageous outfits, and they would just keep talking like nothing unusual had just entered the car. Other people would burst into laughter when they saw me, and I would hold my head high and swagger by, ignoring their guffaws. Incredibly, I was never deterred by these reactions, and in fact, didn’t really care what people thought. If I liked the outfit and it made me feel good, I wore it. Judgers be damned! All these years later, I’m still dressing crazy and still evoking laughter, which I like to think of as delight in my whimsy, but is probably closer to plain old laughter at some crazy sartorial ensembles.

So, a few years ago, I went to Witch-a-Palooza at Gardner Village in Utah, an enchanting celebration of witches. I wandered into a shop and my heart sang when I spotted a pair of purple velvet witch shoes, with a curving turned up toe, and I tried them on. My one rule for shoes is they must make me strut, leap, swagger and hop. If they cause that much delight, then I bring them home. I didn’t have plans for when or where to wear them, but sometimes I buy things as “Closet Candy”, meaning they make my closet even more delightful with their presence, whether or not I ever wear them.

Fast forward to the day my daughter dragged me into Forever 21. “No!” I protested as she pulled me inside. “I hate these crap stores with their piles of junky clothes and I can’t find anything and it’s overwhelming and makes me dizzy…. What’s that?” I ran over to a rack of fluffy faux fur in icy baby blue. I found a Size Large and put it on and ran to the mirror. “OMG! It’s GORGEOUS!! What do you think?”

“I love it,” Annabelle laughed with an eyeroll, as she picked up my purse that I had dropped in my excitement.

I checked the price tag. $20.00. I looked up at the walls and ceiling and said in a voice of wonder, “What is this place?” I ran from rack to rack, and in the end, I came home with three new faux fur coats in stunning colors. I called the coats “chubbies” because of their length. When I show up anywhere and someone is cold, I say, “Would you like to borrow my chubby?” (This brings no end to the hilarity of my friends who have a different meaning for the word “chubby”.)

To me, a “chubby” is a glamorous 1950’s style waist-length coat, perfect for autumn nights at the opera or spring trips in carpool.

Which brings me to yesterday at the Wand Shop. I live next to Salem, home of witch-mania and all sorts of magical shops and people. When my son turned 6, I threw him a Harry Potter birthday party at the haunted (for real!) Hawthorne Hotel, and I found a shop next to the hotel that sold incredible wands and all manner of jaw-dropping Harry Potter stuff. 

Flash forward a few more years, and I decided it would be fun to work in the Wand Shop as holiday help during Halloween. Thousands of extra people descend into Salem during October, and there is no end to the incredible people-watching. I coerced my festive and hilarious Martini Club member, Cristie Carter, to join me in applying to the job. Cristie is one of the funniest people I know and she’s always up for an adventure. I call her the “Cristie Vortex” because I’ll meet her for coffee and seven hours later we are driving down the freeway with pumpkin lattes in hand, feathered witch hats on our heads and a Suburban full of shopping bags, singing Truth Hurts by Lizzo as loud as we can and dancing car-hip-hop as only middle aged moms can. Cristie is the person you want to sit next to at any boring school event–she will have you on the floor laughing. She finds humor in every tiny thing, and I’m always fascinated by the way her mind works. For example, once our girls were in our living room at Halloween time, lamenting the fact that they were headed to a school dance, but weren’t sure how to dance a slow dance. Cristie promptly grabbed two life size skeletons I had set up as Halloween props and did a demonstration with them of how to dance, turning an awkward moment for our budding teens into a hilarious moment.

We went together to the Wand Shop to apply. The owner knows me so we didn’t really apply, we showed up and offered to help him out during the high Salem holiday. Then went to have margaritas on the roof to celebrate our new jobs. It was a sunny Autumn day and the roof of the Salem Hotel offers fabulous views of the harbor and pirate schooners. On the way back to our cars, we popped into my favorite shop, Modern Millie, and $500 later, with shopping bags full of purses in the shape of movie popcorn and pink glittering dinosaurs and dresses covered in frolicking cats, we left for carpool. Mind you, it would take us three months of working full time to pay off the ten-minute shopping spree.

But that’s a different story.

In any case, the wand shop is the opposite of Forever 21.

First of all, it smells like the Whiskey and Absinthe scented candles they have burning in every corner. It is all dark wood, and the soaring magical music from Potter swoops around the shop at all time, making you feel like you are in an enchanting movie.

The owner is a talented set decorator, and he has filled the upper parts of the shop with old piano rolls from player pianos stacked all over like scrolls, and their boxes, which are the exact same size as wands, stacked everywhere. The heater flickers like a fireplace. There are witch brooms everywhere, some with magical creatures carved into the sticks. Antique-looking leather spell books line the shelves, feather quills, and wands of every type on display everywhere—elderwood, bloodwood, walnut, gnarled oak. Some are carved in a spiral, some are pink for cheering spells, and some have jewels encrusted into the handles. They are all different lengths with beautiful handles, and shaped in different ways to evoke different energy. One style wand is shaped like a violin to bring harmony into your home, while another has points on each end so whatever spell you cast out will cast on you too.

The people-watching is priceless. Yesterday a pirate came into the shop, dressed in head-to-toe pirate style. “A pirate costume!” I cooed. The man, who was probably around sixty, said, “Not a costume. More a way of life.” Then he said, “Arrrgghhh” and bought a Butterbeer. I told you, priceless.

Covens of real-practicing witches ages 5-75 come in together wearing sparkling witch hats. One woman comes in wearing sunglasses and shyly lays a book about love spells on the counter. Children dressed like vampires, witches, princesses run through the shop and buy pink wands or delicate seashell wands. A mother buys her teenage daughter and her friend matching wands and matching purple cloaks. People come from all over the world, showing me their tattoos of the triangle, circle and wand with the word Always next to it, buying Slytherin patches, Gryffindor robes, Tarot Cards and they ask us how to read them. (I don’t know.) There two canaries in the window named Fred and George that tweet and hop around in their cage, while customers tap the cage and coo at them.

In addition to Cristie, who runs around putting owls on her head and showing people how to use a time-travel piece, I work with Rose Wolf, a self-ordained professor and high-ranking witch in Salem. She teaches workshops on the poetry of Emily Dickinson and is in some sort of epic falling out with the highest ranked witch in Salem, Laurie Cabot. I don’t know the details, but I do love watching the drama unfold. With her short spiky black hair, eyes rimmed with thick black liner, and heavy silver rings on her fingers, Rose looks like she answered a casting call for a vintage Metallica music video. She dusts and cleans the shop nonstop, picking up an old clock and dusting it before the face falls off completely and after a few tries of getting it back on, she sticks it in the back of the shop with a laugh for future repair. She mutters to herself while she cleans the shop between customers, and this time of year, there are so many customers wanting to come into the shop, they have to put up a rope and a bouncer to organize the lines. But sometimes it’s not so crazy, and when the bell jangles, signaling her that a customer has entered, she talks to them while she cleans. She has a collection of wand jokes and puns that she slips into nearly every conversation. “I’m guessing you are here because you “wand’ a wand? Remember you don’t choose a wand, the wand chooses you! Isn’t that a gorgeous wood? Made right here at the shop by our Master Wandmaker, Joe. He’s the only one in the country who can carve a piece of elderwood into a perfect spiral like that. He’s also a Master Warlock and blesses each wand with his magic. The elderwood protects you from misfortune and helps you to banish and recreate a new reality. What are you looking for? Well it does that too. Now if you’re looking for a different wand, this wand is a cheering wand. It’s pink, which is proven to lift moods. They are now painting prisons that color. And of course it emulates the unicorn horn, the unicorn, the symbol of purity, innocence, truth, faithfulness. Even in medieval times when they wove a unicorn into their tapestry and painted them on their cathedral walls. That wand is a special kind of magic because it resembles the horn of the precious and faithful unicorn.”

While she talks, I imagine myself as a unicorn prancing among the rainbows!! Or maybe I’m a bubbling cauldron of burning bones and whiskey and absinthe trying her darnedest to not overflow and disappear in a puff of smoke.

A few hours in the wand shop with Rose Wolf and Cristie, a furry coat, and a pair of velvet shoes with upturned toes make it all easier to bear.

And I will leave you with this little joke I wrote to amuse myself as I try my darnedest to turn the pain of divorce into humor. Those who know my ex are not surprised by the turn of events that caused the divorce. They say, “Marci, a spade is always a spade.” To which I reply, “Unless that spade is disguised as a hoe, which he was.”

Ba-dum-dum.