Kathryn  Cellerini Moore​

When I was 4 years old Mom and I crafted my first pair of Ruby Slippers. We’d purchased a pair of white shoes with a single bow over the toes, red spray paint and red glitter. Making these shoes with Mom is one of the earliest memories I can recall.

Mom passed away four months ago. Among her personal affects was the last pair of shoes she wore and her cute and characteristically coordinated blue outfit. At some point during the early haze of grief I realized that those shoes Mom wore acted as her ruby slippers. Those shoes supported her on her way to heaven. Heaven, to Mom and to people with similar belief systems, is synonymous with returning home. Over the course of weeks I transformed her shoes into the most brilliant and shiny Ruby Sippers I could using glue and glitter placed one piece at a time. When I wasn’t meditating on shoes I was cutting her blue outfit into fabric petals with the intent to make poppies.

When I imagine an entire yellow brick road from beginning to end, I see a lifespan. Each of our yellow brick roads consist of bricks that we lay for ourselves and each brick represents a memory. Give Pause for Thought is a reliquary that contains handmade objects and mementos of a life lived and a grieving daughter who has memorialized her Mom’s unfinished yellow brick road.