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When I was in my late teens and early twenties I loved shoes. I have written before about my navy blue calf sling-back heels that I shipped back from Hawaii to the Mainland after my abortive year of teaching on Oahu. The box was lost. I don't know what else was in that box, but I mourned those shoes for years. I had bought them in the city down the road from my home town, and my father, when he learned the price I had paid for those beauties, cried, "$25! You paid $25 for a pair of shoes??" And then, two years later, they were lost forever. Well, there's $25 down the drain.
My interest in shoes waned over the years. Four-inch-high wedgies and platforms and other death-defying styles didn't appeal to me. And high heels didn't mix with motherhood, at least not with my style of motherhood. (I know a Frenchwoman whose life was made extra difficult because she did her housework, including a daily vacuuming of the four floors of her house, wearing high heels. Ah, the French.)
Birkenstocks ruled for a long time, gradually widening my outrageously narrow feet so that finally, instead of looking for those rare 8½ AAAA shoes, I could buy the much more readily available (and cheaper) 9½ medium.
For years I didn't even bother looking in shoe store windows because all the styles were ugly. I bought shoes out of necessity only, not passion.
I will blame the current situation on my daughter-in-law and one of my daughters. Because of them ("Wear little boots, Mum" said the daughter and "Wanna go with me to John Fluevog?" asked the daughter-in-law) I entered the sanctum sanctorum on Queen St. West.
This store, this designer, has, for better or worse, re-awakened my love of shoes. Now, I know that each of us is (has) a soul and/or a higher self. I am most certainly more than my footwear. I know this for a certainty.
So I cannot explain why my awakening thought, on days when I will be out and about, is "what boots will I wear?" The clothes are planned not according to the weather but according to which boots and shoes I will be sporting. Occasionally I end up noticeably underdressed for the weather because I took it into my head to wear tights and my little black boots.
My posture has been affected. We all know about the Winter Hunch, the painfully tense shoulders caused by trying to keep the chin, mouth, and nose out of the cold wind. Well, in my case this Hunch has been exacerbated by the John Fluevog myopia. Even if the wind and cold allow me to walk with my head up, spine straight, sternum lifted, I create my own posture problem by wanting to see my boots as I walk. I peek down pretending to be examining cracks in the sidewalk or bumps in the road, but I am actually admiring my boots—left, right, left—as they carry me beautifully into the world.
As I said, I know that I am more than my boots. I am glad that my shoe fetish took a lengthy break during my lifetime. And I resist visits to Queen St. W. as much as I can. But there it is: I have created a late-life addiction to John Fluevog's beautiful shoes. Deal with it.
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