In My Shoes

I wore the same size shoe from the time my foot stopped growing sometime during my teens until about two years ago. Shoes were always a fun fashion item. When I lost my leg, I had to make major changes in the kind of shoes I wore, but I still had a lot of choices. The one thing I had to give up was high heels, which didn't break my heart. They were the one style that was almost never comfortable, unless I was sitting down. I did have one pair that caused me a bit of heartache to give away. They were gorgeous and were actually comfortable. Oh well. No point in crying over unwearable shoes. Then, a couple of years ago, I started working with a new prosthetist who told me my shoes weren't a good fit. That was a big surprise to me, as I'd had no major complaints down through the years. I went to a "real" shoe store, the kind of place where there are salespeople who know their business inside and out. I stood on one of those flat metal contraptions that measure your foot's length and width and sure enough, it said I needed size 9. I'd been wearing size 7-1/2 for decades. Fortunately, I've never linked my self-worth to my shoe size, the way I see some women do in old sit-coms. Over the years with my prosthetic legs, I'd cut back on the number of styles that I wore. It's a bit of a job to change the shoe on the prosthetic foot and many mornings I'm in a rush. Or lazy. Or both. But I still had quite a collection that I thought I might want to wear sometime. Imelda Marcos didn't need to worry about competition from me, but it still took a couple of hours to go through all the shoes, sometimes saying a fond farewell, and packing them up for charity. I'd never worn most of them and all I could think was, "What a waste of money!" I consoled myself by remembering that a bunch of women out there somewhere were happy to have them. My closet now has two pairs of sneakers and two pairs of regular shoes. It's more than enough. Of course, I don't attend balls and elegant dinners, although one day I was thinking about that. I decided that if I were invited to something fancy and chose to go, I would wear one of these well-fitting shoes and let people think what they'd like. It's amazing how much that doesn't matter to me anymore. I'll be getting a third pair of sneakers soon and I'm very excited about it. I'm waiting to see what the fall collection has in the way of new color choices. Sneakers are my best friends. Shoes are all about comfort and stability for me now. That's very similar to my attitude toward life in general.