Theme Week Nine: Literary Pointillism

I don’t remember wearing my first pair of shoes, tiny white slippers with thin strands of ribbon for shoelaces. There’s a picture of me as a brand new infant in these shoes; my eyes are closed and I’m bald but I make up for my less-than-impressive looks by being dressed so well.

I was always excited for winter because I got to wear cute boots. My favorite pair were bright purple with rubber soles that almost hit my knee. Different shades of purple ran in stripes up and down the boot and the inside was fuzzy; they always kept my feet warm and I thought they looked pretty cool with my matching snowsuit. My brother and I would go sliding in the backyard and he’d stand on his knees to tie my boots up because I didn’t know how to do it. He tried to teach me but grew impatient when I took too long and ended up doing it himself.

The day before kindergarten started my grandmother took me to Kmart to buy school clothes. I was allowed to pick out one outfit, whatever I wanted. It took a while for me to decide what to buy but I finally settled on a pink floral pajama set and a pair of red, faux-leather shoes with a strap around the ankle. They were the most beautiful pair of shoes I’d ever owned; my mother never let me buy anything like them. She’d say “they weren’t the type of thing you could wear every day.” It quickly became obvious my mother didn’t know anything because I got a lot of use out of them. Every day when I came home from school I wore those shoes.

When I was eight I got the most spectacular pair of black leather tap shoes. They were so shiny I thought I could see my reflection in them; they were far superior to quiet dullness of my ballet flats. They had a slight metal heel and a flat metal sole and I loved the sound they made when I danced. I practiced all the time.  A thick piece of black ribbon tied around my ankle into a beautiful bow.  For the Christmas recital my tap class and I performed a routine to “Up on the Rooftop."  On the polished stage our synchronized steps played a cheery melody for the audience.

In middle school my mother and I battled over my shoes. She didn’t understand that I needed to wear heels. To me, it was pretty obvious. I was short and my pants dragged on the ground if I didn’t wear them. She said they were impractical, that I’d give people the “wrong impression.” I told her they could think what they wanted but I was still going to wear cute shoes. She said my priorities were warped, that I cared too much about materialistic things; she was wrong. I wasn’t materialistic at all, I just liked shoes.

I won the war a week before my eighth grade graduation. She bought me a pair of strappy, white sandals with a stiletto heel. They looked perfect against my tan and were made for my dress. They gave me blisters and once graduation was over, I took them off and put on a pair of flips flops. I wore them for a total of three hours and after that they spent their days in the back of my closet with all the other rejects who failed to live up to my expectations.

My love affair with shoes became serious in high school. I hadn’t really committed before but I knew it was the real thing when I slipped on a pair of black leather booties embellished with three shiny buttons that ran along the outside. They  had a zipper alongside the inner ankle and a practical three-inch heel. They cost me sixty dollars, more money than I had ever spent on anything. It was also the first time I bought myself anything with money I earned. I bought them on a Saturday and  I couldn’t wait for school on Monday to show them off. They looked perfect underneath my jeans, making my feet look tiny. Everybody loved them. By the end of the day, I could barely walk down the ramps that led outside. My toes were crunched together, numb. I had blisters on the back of my ankles that were aggravated with every step I took. But I was in love and for the first time, I wasn’t going to give up that easily. We worked it out and after a few weeks, nothing felt better on my feet. I wore those boots for four years. They travelled with me to college in Canada and back; I wore them almost every day and I cried when the heel broke. It took me three months and dozens of stores to find an adequate replacement but nothing found their way into my heart the way those boots did.

 I found love again in the most unexpected place, with an old pair of Converse All Stars sitting in the corner of his living room. They’d been there a while, collecting dust. Old, mint green high tops with a thin pink strip around the white sole. The laces were frayed; the rubber toe was stained with mud and dirt. He had bought them at a yard sale for two bucks and joked they were his glass slippers and the girl whose feet fit them was his princess. I slid them on, sure they wouldn’t fit. The tag said they were a size seven and a half, I wore an eight. I laughed when they fit like a glove and he checked my toes over and over, sure I was lying. Unintentionally, I got the comfort and dependability I was looking for without paying a dime; all it took was the courage to try on something new and see how it fit.