06/14/10
I am the anti-Carrie Bradshaw. For women of my age, you’ll remember Carrie Bradshaw as the glamourous main character of “Sex and the City”. The thing about Carrie, one of the many cooler-than-I’ll –ever-be things about Carrie, was her shoes. Stilettos in every incarnation. Grungy, sexy, punk, professional, demure…. Her shoes defined her, sculpted her, enhanced her, made her the character we loved. And she loved them. Loved them in an unnatural way. Obsessed over her shoes. Cared for them like children. Carrie and her shoes were one.
I used to be one with my shoes. A lifetime ago now. First I had to stop wearing clogs and mules, because I started inexplicably falling out of the open backs. Then I had to stop wearing heels of any type, because I was constantly twisting my ankle when my foot collapsed inside the shoe. I cried a lot as I gave away all of my sexy shoes and replaced them with sensible flats. Luckily, flats were in at the time, and good looking flats were not hard to find. Once you set your mind to it.
It was flats or going barefoot, which is frowned upon at my job, so I made it my mission to find cute flats. Sure they’d never be sexy flats. Never “knock-me-down-and-f*#k-me-shoes” as we used to say in my pre-feminist, Neanderthal days. But I could live with cute. The fact that I am intensely strong-willed works in my favor here. I decided there was no choice but to embrace flats, and so I did. I found flats by every designer I loved. I found metallic flats, cute flats, elegant flats, sassy flats, you name it, I found it. Okay, not sexy flats, but I’m no magician.
Then I got a leg brace. Officially an AFO (ankle/foot orthotic). Officially a UFO (ugly f*%king orthotic). And this UFO demanded a lot of me. Almost more than I could bear. This UFO demanded…. Sneakers. That’s right, sneakers, and hiking shoes. Exclusively.
“But I don’t wear sneakers” I wailed to the orthodist. “I guess you have some shopping to do” he responded calmly. The truth was I did own a single pair of sneakers for working out, but I hadn’t brought them so he would not have the option of choosing them as the right shoe for the orthotic. I brought every other pair of shoes I owned, but not those ugly, utilitarian sneakers that I hid in a closet separate from my other shoes. Those sneakers lived in the guest closet and would stay there.
I cried all the way home, unable to imagine this grotesque turn my life had taken. I called my sister who found it hilarious that I was so broken-hearted about wearing sneakers. “We’ll find something cool” she promised. She was coming out in a few days to help me and my family adjust to my new level of disability. I could not picture it. I was not in any way reassured.
It would have been nice if it ended there. But it didn’t, of course. My kind and generous sister made the mistake of taking me to the mall to find those cool shoes she promised that would fit my new UFO. First stop, a comfort shoe store. The sales woman was fakey-nice who pretended to remember me and asked about my leg “injury”. I told her it was a progressive neurological disease that would ultimately prevent me from walking. “Oooh. [silence]. What can I help you girls find?” Ultimately after I’d exhausted myself trying unsuccessfully to fit my brace into 15,000 ‘athletic sandals,’ I tried a sneaker for my sister’s benefit. Not surprisingly, it worked. It even had special laces that came in at an angle, not directly on top of the foot, which made the brace fitting inside easier. So that was it. I bought my first pair of sneakers. I wore them out of the store, the way I used to when I was a child because I was so excited about my new shoes that I couldn’t wait to wear them. Damn were they comfortable.
Next stop, a new Clark’s store. Now if you don’t know the brand Clark’s, I should tell you that this is also a comfort shoe. In fact, I’d always thought of Clark’s as your grandmother’s comfort shoe. But my sister was adamant that I would find one pair besides sneakers I could wear. She still believed in the cool shoe solution. So she dragged me into Clark’s, where I was surprised to find very cool styles. Not for me and my giant UFO. But for someone else. Someone else’s grandmother. Okay, not the grandmother- I was just being snarky. They had great shoes. Great. So great in fact, that I found several pairs that were my very favorite shoes that I had ever seen. They were deeply stained leather, very rich brown with ecru stitching, a slim band across the top of the foot, near the toes but not obnoxiously so. Cork wedge heels. And then I saw them. My dream shoes. A 4- inch cork platform wedge. Retro, yet contemporary. Rich black with the same ecru stiching. A solid band of suede that went from mid-toe to almost the bottom of your ankle, about an inch away from the ankle. With a seam running down the middle as if the suede had been stitched together by hand. As if they had been sewn for your foot specifically, sandal couture, by a shriveled Italian shoemaker crouched at your feet to put the finishing touches on his masterpiece. I was speechless. They were incredible.
They were the shoes I would never again be able to wear.
I guess I forgot to mention that I had taken two muscle relaxers before we went out, and then I popped a Valium because I was so upset and anxious at the thought of what I might be forced to endure in shopping for the UFO. By the time we got to Clark’s all my meds had kicked in. And I was, to put it mildly, pretty loopy. It first manifested as me declaring in a loud voice things like “I CAN’T BELIVE THAT CLARK’S MADE THESE SHOES. THEY ARE ACTUALLY PRETTY COOL.” It progressed to me telling a salesperson my theory about Clark’s and grandmothers, but that they (the store) carried cool purses, which was a surprise to me. Big sis was giving me the emphatic finger across the throat sign at this one. So while my sister tried on the shoes I loved most in the world, and walked around in them like she didn’t have to give a thought to her balance or lifting her foot to clear the floor, I took a seat next to the cash register and fingered the socks. “Are you sure you like them?” she asked. “You don’t think they are too….I don’t know….sexy”? Okay, she didn’t say sexy, she said something else. But they were sexy. They were the sexiest shoes I’d ever seen.
By this time, I’d picked out several pairs of socks that would go with my new sneakers. I started weeping quietly as I paid. Maybe I was bawling. Everyone appeared uncomfortable. I waited outside while my sister purchased the best shoes in the world. The shoes I would never be able to wear again.
She came out of the store and tried to be upbeat. She thought maybe I was crying over the socks. She was giving me a pep talk about how they make really cute socks these days, sometimes even made out of soy! “It’s not that,” I wept. “It’s just that I really love your new shoes. I LOVE them. They are the best shoes in the world. They are so me.” And the torrent started. I couldn’t shut up, and I couldn’t stop sobbing. I could have collapsed there on the filthy mall floor and if I could have moved my legs I would have kicked them like a six-year old having a tantrum. IT’S NOT FAIR, I would have shrieked, THOSE ARE MY SHOES. But I was thirty years older than six, and I had enough self-control to hobble on through my tears. I didn’t’ want to make my sister feel guilty. It wasn’t her fault that she could walk. I was glad she could walk in those beautiful shoes. I was glad somebody bought them- they deserved to be bought. Nonetheless, I was inconsolable.
The day ended with the purchase of a pair of hiking shoes that also fit my brace that had a few pink touches to make them more ‘feminine.’. My new dress shoes. Satisfied that I had a new functional shoe wardrobe (and perhaps because I was so stoned on Valium by this time that I could barely stand), we went home. Tempted to put my new shoe wardrobe in the guest closet, I compromised and put them in their boxes on my bedroom floor. In the corner. Where I intended them to stay. I slept off the despair and dreamed of wedges.
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