I have big ears—not aesthetically big but the type of ears, which, involuntarily, hear everything. Therefore, as whispered conversations decorated the echoing walls of my home for a few weeks I knew that something was not quite right. As I walked down to breakfast on a Saturday morning, my father was on the phone with my grandfather. As the skin on my father’s forehead grew tighter and tighter and wrinkled together in the center, I knew they were arguing. Yet, everyone in the Silverstein family argues: I believed it to be harmless. Yet as voices raised and my father, brusquely, hung up the phone I knew something was not just "not right," but wrong. When I questioned him, in a burst of anger, he told me.
I threw chairs across my kitchen on that rainy March day. I was only in sixth grade. My father had no idea what had come over me. As tears dripped down my face as I mourned a piece of my life, which I thought was dying. I cried out, "What about me? What about my future?"
Future— six letters. It is funny how a single word, the combination of a few simple letters, can evoke great feelings and moods. Whether they are fear, apprehension, excitement, or hope we all have an underlying feeling when presented with a word like this. As we prepare for college and attempt to, in some way, narrow all of our options down our thoughts have been preoccupied with a multitude of questions, especially regarding our future. When a college admissions director presents us with the questions, "what are you planning on doing with the rest of your life?" many of us grope in our minds, crazy with thought, to find an answer. I am one of the few teens who knows what they want to study and who they want to be five or ten years from now. This could be a G-d sent or a burden, yet regardless; it is something that strikes many as unusual, almost premature yet I would beg to differ. My future is in fashion; I know this from the feeling in my gut to the love for it deep in my heart. It could be argued this is because my love for magazines and fashion editorials. It could be said it is because of my addiction to shopping. Yet, I am sure it is the cause of that rainy day in March where my family questioned their livelihood and I, for the first time, truly understood where my life would take me.
I tried to let it sink into my head the information that my father had just presented to me. I recapped his words:
"I received an offer last week from someone who is interested in buying my shares of Nina Footwear. I think I am going to sell."
Although I was only eleven years old, I was convinced my father was overlooking imperative details. I questioned, "You’re not the only stockholder, you know. Some people in my family actually care about this company. Grandpa and Flori won’t sell."
"Emily, this man is prepared to offer enough money. They will sell."
Yet I knew my Great Uncle Stanley, Flori’s father and I knew the type of relationship he had with my father and whether this was over ten dollars or ten billion dollars simply because my father had, in part, orchestrated the deal, Stanley would not sell.
I responded, "Fine. If you are seriously ready to throw fifty years of a business a way, I’m going to call Uncle Stanley right now. He’ll never let you do it and you know it." My voice was stuttering and my body was shaking. I had truly challenged my father where I knew it would hurt him the most: the company’s history and the restraints of his Great Uncle who, as a founder, owned greater shares than he.
My father almost yelped like a puppy being reproached with a pull on their collar, "No!"
He paced around the room and this gave me time to reflect. Ever since I was in first grade if you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up I would answer, without hesitation: a teacher. This interest and determination never fluctuated. I was always sure of myself, even as a young child. Yet my mind was running in circles around me in effort to catch all of the memories of my family’s business which I felt that my father was attempting to throw away and I was trying to safely retrieve and return to my heart for safety. I could remember walking down the streets of New York City while my father and my grandfather talked to me about looking at people’s feet as they walked rather than their faces. They said, "You could know everything about a person and what they are thinking and feeling simply by what shoes they are wearing." I could remember assisting the packing of sample suitcases for the shows in Europe and Las Vegas. I saw the smiles of my father and my grandfather as they saw how much I was enjoying myself. I saw the smiles of all of my father’s employees. Yet most of all, I saw my family in those shoes. I felt like my father was throwing my family and their hard work away.
"What are we going to do if you don’t work for Nina."
"I don’t know. I’ll find something. You shouldn’t worry about that."
I was prepared to say something that I thought would save the company yet would change my view of my future forever. I questioned whether I was prepared to make that sacrifice. Then I again asked myself, would it be a sacrifice? I realized that of course it wouldn’t. I would fall in love.
I took a deep breath. "Well it’s that…it’s that…well I thought I wanted to work for a shoe company. That’s all."
He tried to console me, "We could start another shoe company—you and me together.
"It wouldn’t be the same. It’s not Nina."
He sighed, "You really want to do this?"
"I think so," I said.
"Do you know what working with this company would be? fight with your siblings, support your entire extended family, even fight with your father and grandfather just over this business