Shown: toast
This morning, in a fit of despair as we were dressing to go to the Thanksgiving parade, I declared with mourning: "I have no shoes!" Mr. Pom retorted with a snort and glanced toward my closet as I scurried across the room to secure the closet door so the heaps of shoes littering the floor could not be heaped on my bed. For there were many, but not a single pair would I wear.
I keep shoes a long time, even when they are entirely unsuitable and
not fit for wearing. You know what I mean, those shoes you buy in a fit
of pique when you decide that you are entirely too young to be wearing
shoes that your mother admires. shoes that call to you like sirens
over the sea, impossibly high heels with gold chains and pointy toes,
stilettos for feet. Or those sweet, red flats with bows that looked so
demure and Audrey Hepburn on the lucite stand in the shoe department
but at home look like red condoms on impossible wide and flat feet.
So my closet is filled with one-offs, shoes that will never fit
right, shoes that are just a tad too narrow, shoes that make my knees
ache, shoes that go with nothing, designer shoes that mocked me as I
paid discount prices only to bring home and discover that the heels
squeak when walking. A closet full of shoes that just don't quite fit
two feet that are impossibly wide, with high arches, and two different
sizes, making fit a conundrum of which to favor, the left or the right.
I have reached the age when I can no longer pretend that running
around everyday in sexy shoes or sweet little shoes is my future. I
believe feet are the last of the bodily delusions to wilt and die,
those dysmorphic mind's eye pictures of what we think we look like. It
would take a Freudian couch and months to sort through the muck and
excavate the place where the first tiny shoots of lust and craving
sprouted for bright flats with interlocking "C's", for black patent
riding boots quilted to the knees, for peau de soie pumps with taffeta
flowers, for gold gladiator sandals made in Capri, or brown
alligator heels that strike with sexy authority down the office
corridors.
So I gathered up all the near misses, the dozens of discounted
designer shoes, including all the little suede flats, the pink eyelet
pointy spring pumps, the bronze kitten heels, the soft green leather
witch's shoes that lace up the ankle, the smart 3" heeled black patent
pumps, the on sale designer shoes where just one more wearing might
make them stop making me limp, the coral patent mules that I can only
wear to church when I don't have to walk more than ten feet from the
door, and buttery cordovan alligator driving loafers that I am
suddenly walking out of, as it seems that my feet have lost weight
along with the rest of me. As Oprah calls them, all the "ten minute
shoes" went out to Salvation Army in the ubiquitous white plastic
cinched garbage bag and with it went my trepidation over opening my
closet door and my regret and moral outrage that I am so weak-willed
and delusional to think that I could ever get away with leopard flats
with gross grain ribbons on my Sicilian peasant feet.
And so I found I have no winter shoes.
I will not look back.
With the desire to get the monkey off my feet, I took them aching
and tender to Lord & Taylor's shoe sale. On Saturday afternoon.
Pre-holiday. With a strict half hour deadline before I was to meet Mr.
Pom in the parking lot. I steered past the BCBG silver oxfords, the
Marc Jacobs satin evening pumps, the Kate Spade sling backs, the
Betsey Johnson leopard skimmers, the Jill Stuart high-heeled booties,
Tory Burch metallic wedges, Isabella Fiore t-straps, and the Charles
Nolan peek-toes. I started to round the corner past the Chanel leather
ballet flats and fight through the throngs to the wall marked "Comfort"
when I. Just. Couldn't. Do. It.
All round me where women with long legs, thin ankles, and narrow
feet modeling slinky shoes with low-cut vamps, luscious boots that
molded to their shapely calves, and satiny evening sandals tied on with
ribbons as thin as spider webs. They all had the same look of adoration
that I coveted in their eyes. They were in the zone. The smell of
leather filled the air, lightly scented with perfume and the adrenalin
sweat of 200 women flinging boxes over their shoulders as they tried on
shoes and sandals and boots and flat and pumps and mary janes. Women
standing by the stock room door with one shoe in their hand, the
perfect shoe, the shoe that would complete them once and for all.
Me, I went "ugh". Or rather, "Ugg".
Red-faced and head hanging in shame I headed for the shoes that I
have ridiculed for years. I sidled up to those ugly, bland, shapeless,
suede muffins of a shoe and tried on the clog. A soft, fleece-lined,
rubber-soled clog.
And then stood in them for ten minutes as I tried to catch a saleperson's eye to see them in another color.
And suddenly, I realized something: my feet didn't hurt. My knees
didn't ache. I didn't have to shift my weight from leg to leg. My feet
were warm, they were comfortable, they were happy. They were shod in
ugly and it felt good.
They're just for now, you know. For cold weather, for holiday
shopping. I'll shed them come spring and by then a few pounds lighter I
can go back to to pretty, light skimmers in sweet colors and maybe even
a heel higher than two inches......
A girl has her dreams.