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Her name is Lola, she marches to Frosty the Snowman

6 January 2007, 10.06am… Lola walks through the front door and instantly kicks off her pink rubber sandals under the low hallway table. Today she is dressed in head-to-toe pink – pink hat, pink sundress and those pink rubber sandals.

Lola’s mother steps into the hallway and laughs at her two year-old daughter. Together they walk down the long hallway, through a kitchen and into a small, paved backyard where a big, ginger cat is stretched out in the sun.

 

“Look Loly,” the mother says, “the pussycat has the same colour hair as you.” Lola reaches down to gently pat the cat on the top of his head. The cat tenses, expecting the small child to pat too heavily or pull his long fur. But Lola does neither, and the cat relaxes.

 

Lola explores the rest of the house. She points questioningly to the folded table-tray resting against the wall in the lounge-room. “It’s a drawing table,” she is told. Lola’s little girl eyes widen. The small table with the ‘60s Eiffel Tower print is assembled, and pens and paper appear. She stands at the table and draws a line on each of the seven sheets of paper.

 

On the footpath outside, Lola assembles the two adult women into a conga line formation of her choosing. She places herself at the front of the line, cocks her elbows a la Chicken Dance, and looks back to her mother. “Frosty the Snowman was a jolly happy soul,” her mother sings in response. “With a corncob pipe and a button nose, and two eyes made out of coal.”

 

Lola marches her arms and stomps her legs to her mother’s singing – the two adult women follow Lola’s lead. “She made her father and her grandfather march to Frosty the Snowman in a busy shopping centre yesterday,” the mother says with a laugh. “It was hilarious.”

 

Post-march, Lola is placed in her pusher for a faster journey to the shoe shop.

 

First a purple pair of shoes catches her eye, then a red pair. Lola manages to stretch her way to a red shoe and slips the size 8 onto her tiny right foot. The shoe dangles, and Lola gazes on appreciatively. She tries on the purple shoe, and then a green shoe.

 

Freed from the pusher’s constraints in the next shop, Lola sits on the floor and tries on shoe after shoe after shoe while her mother tries on dresses in a fitting room. Her mother comes out of the fitting room to take in a better view of the new dress in the bigger shop mirror. Lola watches on, her arms full of shiny, gold shoes.

 

Stepping out of the fitting room the mother apologises to the shop assistant for the clutter of coloured shoes covering the just-vacated dressing room floor.

 

“She loves shoes,” Lola’s mother says with a wry smile. “I wonder where she got that from…”

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