I have two great regrets in my life: 1) One night when I was sixteen, I started laughing as my big high school crush was about to kiss me, and 2) my mom and I don’t wear the same size shoes. Such a bummer – she has good taste and more money than me.
I write about shoes a lot. They’ve always been a thing for me. Shoes and me, we go WAY back. Years ago, my great uncle ran shoe stores, and it was very exciting when he would come back to Baltimore with cases of shoes for everyone. Unfortunately, the stores closed when I was fairly young, but I have fond memories of a couple of summers of Miss Piggy sneakers in early childhood, compliments of Uncle Phil.
In fifth grade, I had a pair of knockoff Reebok hightops, and I was teased mercilessly for them. In sixth grade, I got a pair of those bass oxfords everyone wore (dang – couldn’t find a link to the girly version) and felt like I had arrived. I have this memory of sitting in my bedroom in ninth grade, watching my reflection in the silver cube that I used as an end table as I laced up a pair of chucks; I was looking back and forth between the reflection of the chucks in the cube and The Smiths poster hanging behind my door, and thinking something like, “This is who I am now.” And of course, through high school and college, I had shoe dreams as often as other people had dreams about going to school naked or making out with some one unattainable. (Although, I had those, too. Still do.)
Shoes have always been a strong identifier of where I am in life, and a pleasant constant: I could always find great shoes in my size, regardless of the size of the rest of me. Even at my heaviest, I could find killer heels that made my legs look great. No matter what kind of bad haircut I had, no matter how bloated I felt, no matter what any other part of me was doing, shoes were there for me as a comfort – the one thing that I could count on to look good.
I know that shoes as a signifier of where one is in life is fairly universal, something deep in the collective, but it shows up around me -just beyond my own two feet- in some striking ways. About the time that my parents split, my mom started wearing heels for the first time (heels made her taller than my dad, which bugged him). And, the moment I was certain that they would split was a conversation I had with my mom one night while I was getting ready to go on a date and she was organizing her shoes. I can still see her sitting there in her closet, with shoeboxes stacked four high on all sides of her. She was ready to walk.
Lately, shoes have become less of a superficial vanity and more a way of connecting with femininity. (Even though I may overthink it, it is still really fun.) A bunch of stuff got me here all at once: early in the year I figured out why I have long had this overdeveloped masculine side, and that even though it still serves me, it need not continue to do so at the expense of enjoying being female. Then I had a birthday and realized I had one year before reaching a critical age at which certain types of clothing expire. Some health issues I had cleared. I started winnowing anything remotely frumpy from my wardrobe, intent on enjoying my vibrantly healthy self sartorially. Summer happened. I learned to keep a pedicure. I was teaching and spending a ton of time barefoot, and, at the risk sounding totally airy-fairy, started feeling very grounded and connected with powerful first chakra stuff – which includes the feet. Shoes were no longer a way of compensating for what was not working physically, instead they became a way of showing off what I have below the ankles: earth, yin, femininity, openness, rootedness, and on and on. So much transformed over the past year, and as usual, it has come back around to shoes.
I am getting all heavy about it, but as I said, it is fun. Like, super fun. There were times in my life when femininity was just a tool I used to win. No wonder it was hard for me to connect with women. That has changed, and now I don’t care who wins the contest. I just want to enjoy the dance for a good long time. (Also, what better way to connect with [most] other women than shoes?)
Anyway, I think all of this life-embracing thoroughly justifies spending $70 on sandals at the end of November when I’m broke, right? 
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OMG, I’m writing about shoes again.
