There's a reason so many stories feature magical shoes. Dorothy's ruby slippers, Hans Brinker's silver skates, the Seven-League Boots. No article of clothing so punctuates an outfit, or changes the way we feel and move than when we slip into a distinctive pair of shoes.
Pause for a moment and I'll bet you can picture favorite shoes from your past. For me, it's the red Converse high tops I wore so often in high school that someone wrote a poem about them. They boosted my morale during years filled with teenage stumbles. Maybe for you it was a pair of Frye boots with chunky flair, or lace-up, punked-out Doc Martens.
While I've forgotten lots of childhood details, I can conjure with exquisite precision the spike-heeled pumps from the 1960s that my mom tossed into the dress-up hamper for my sister and me. One pair was burnt-orange with arrow-sharp toes, and another was suede the color of a martini olive with a ruffled vamp. While it was fun to drape ourselves in shawls and twirly skirts, it was clomping around in those dangerous shoes that invited us to imagine life as adults with power… and certainly killed any desire to wear high heels in the future.
Maybe there's something to the homonym of the word sole and soul? What we put on our feet often makes visible something essential to who we are. In my grade-school years, the back-to-school shopping decision about the year's new shoes was filled with delicious frisson: Buster Brown brogues or saddle shoes? Then, making sure I had the right-color polish for the weekly upkeep — oh, it was thrilling enough that I'd place the new shoes on a chair by my bed so they'd greet me in the morning.
Then, oh, lord, there was the middle-school Summer of Blisters, as my friends tried mightily to slap around in Dr. Scholl's wood and leather sandals — all of us duped by Seventeen magazine into thinking our skinny teenage legs would be sculpted by those noisy clogs.
And maybe now I should acknowledge that women might have a closer relationship to shoes than many men. My friend Judy said that women know at a glance when another woman's shoes might be killing her. And women are so immersed in the toxic stew of bodily objectification and loathing that shoes are often the only clothing we can shop for with unmitigated joy, without the judgment of dressing-room mirrors.
While I love a transformational shoe, I'm no Cinderella; I like shoes I can stomp in. A month ago, I walked with my pal Debra from the “tippety top to the tippety bottom” of Manhattan in one day wearing my road-worthy Keen sandals (that's 17.53 miles, including a serendipitous detour to see Alexander Hamilton's last residence). The sunburst-shaped tan on my feet is a happy momento of a day I'll savor, made possible by the right footwear.
I'm aware, of course, as the daughter of Depression-era parents, and as a person who is, well, awake, of the privilege of having more than one pair of shoes, or even having one sturdy pair. And because I'm also a penny-pincher and sustainably-minded, I cherish a good shoe repair shop. In South Bend, Alex's Shoe Hospital has been in his family since 1919, and I trust him with telling me the truth about a sole that can be saved … and those that cannot. (RIP, lovely gifted cobalt-blue loafers from Capri!) This past spring, when my sensible black walking shoes got salt-stained by South Bend slush, my spouse searched for days for the solvent to address the stains, and my daughter swept them out of my hands to condition, polish, and buff them to a sheen that moved me unexpectedly to tears.
Then, in gift that also made me weep (what is it about this stage of life?), our children surprised me with another pair I never would have dared to buy for myself: Elegantly cut German walking shoes in two shades of garden green with a lightening bolt of metallic bronze, and a lug sole for adventures to come. I call them my Magic Dragons, and am grateful to be reminded, when I reach past my sensible shoes to slide them on, that we all contain multitudes. Any of us are lucky, indeed, to lace up and head into the wide world, and — wiser than Odysseus, I hope — to remember the adventures that enrich our journeys home.
