That sure does not look like one pair of shoes, does it? Worse than that, those are only my summer shoes. No sneakers there either. Oh my gosh, but I do love my shoes. I’m not sure where I got this shoe fetish, but I know it wasn’t how things were in my house growing up. We got a new pair of shoes for school each September, a pair of sneakers for gym class, a pair of after-school playing shoes, and one pair of patient leather shoes for me for church. I loved those patient leather shoes best until the nuns told me I shouldn’t be wearing them because the boys could see my underpants reflected in them…I believed that for a long time. I don’t go to that church anymore.
Anyways, I was cleaning out my closet early this summer, and I got to thinking about all these shoes and how much I loved them. Yes, I do wear them, but I would wear them more if I didn’t have so many of them to rotate through. Then, from there, somehow, I thought about my grandmother. She had one pair of shoes. Think about that for a minute. Only one pair of shoes, and not only did she have one pair of shoes; they were not even pretty shoes. This thought would not leave my head. She didn’t have any sneakers, no dress-up shoes, no slippers, and heaven forbid, no flip-flops. Her only pair of shoes were black, and each year she got one new pair, and they were saved for going out when she had to, maybe to the doctor’s office or a grocery shopping trip, or even a wedding. The old shoes became her house shoes. I’m sure she would have liked more than one pair, but you see, she couldn’t have more. When she was a teenager, she developed tuberculosis of the hip, leaving her with one leg much shorter than her other. Her shoes were specially built. Each year she would make a trip to Boston from the North Shore to get measured for her new shoes, one with a very high, thick heel, one regular. That was it until the following year came along. There was not a variety of colors or styles in the shoes she needed to wear. For as long as I can remember, she wore identical shoes all the time. Black and uneventful. They were not cheap either.
After this thought got into my head, I started looking for photos of her. I didn’t have many, but I did find a few from when she was a very long woman that I never thought about or knew my mother had… Sure enough, after looking with a magnifying glass, I did see that her left shoe was built up and her right shoe was flat. The shoe from back then was cuter than the shoes I remember her wearing and later in her life, the shoe was much higher. The other thing I noticed from this photo above is how lovely and slim she was and probably in good health. That smile also caught my attention. She actually looked happy, and I don’t think we saw that beautiful smile too often. Sometimes, but I think as the years moved on, life got more challenging for her. I don’t have a date on this photo, so I don’t even know how old she might have been, but I’m thinking late teens, early 20s at most. I have more research to do now that I’ve stirred up this bee hive. When did she come to the States? She was born in Springhill, Nova Scotia, a small coal mining town in Canada. I did find out how she met my grandfather, but I don’t know when they married. On my trip to Nova Scotia this year, I learned of how my grandfather happened to be in the States, but that is a story for another day. Back to the shoes.
In the photo above, it is easy to see that she could take care of herself. She was physically able to manage getting her shoes and socks on and off. As the years passed, though, she had some health problems and gained some weight, and eventually developed diabetes and, later, some heart issues. She was no longer able to bend over to put her shoes on each day or to take them off at night. That became the job of whoever was living with her at the time…going from my grandfather to my oldest brother and then to me. How sad for her, that her life and time were regulated by those who helped her. We never thought anything about it at the time. It was just what we did, and we never failed her. We lived in a two-family house, with my grandmother and grandfather having the first floor. Now, I’m thinking that was because she needed it. The fewer stairs, the better for her.
She got around fine in the house. Moving was no problem, but she did rest every afternoon and watch her fifteen-minute soap operas…The Guiding Light and Search for Tomorrow. In the summer, she would open the window next to her chair…you know, the kind of window where you had to put a stick in it to hold it up, and since our house was on the corner of the main street, she was able to watch all the traffic go by and was often visited by the people passing by. She loved that chair and window, and it was her world each summer. She did her laundry in a ringer washing machine and hung it up on a pulley line off a little porch in the backyard. She also had a kitchen chair out there in the summer where she could sit to get some fresh air and watch us kids play in the yard when we were small. She would chat with our neighbors’ next door, over the fence. Occasionally, she would make it down the stairs in the summer when my Mom would have a cook-out, but mostly she liked her porch. I have memories of taking her grocery shopping after I got my driver’s license, maybe a couple of times a month, when the original First National grocery store closed on Bridge St. It was only three buildings away from where we lived, and I do think that she might have walked up there before we were driving. Later, I would take her to the A&P, which was manageable for her as she had the carriage for support and of course, I carried her groceries to the car.
Here’s what she didn’t have the ability to do…she never went for a long walk like we all take for granted. She never visited the woods; she could not climb a mountain or even a hill. She couldn’t take a dog for a walk, so she had a parakeet. She never got her driver’s license; probably not many did back then. I never saw her dance; how sad, she never played with us on the floor as small children. She never walked downtown like all the other ladies in the neighborhood. She never played a sport or swam, or even sat on the beach, which was a five-minute walk from our house. Without her shoe on, she had to walk on her tippy toes on her lousy foot around the house, and I only saw her do that at night and early in the morning until someone helped her get her shoes on. She was proud, though, and always put the regular shoe on herself. She could slide her foot into that one, but we would tie it for her along with the high shoe. She was able to do that because her lousy leg was capable of being bent backward. She never worked in the garden, but she loved all the flowers that my Mom grew. And although it was never talked about, I’m sure she could never get in and out of a bathtub as she aged. We did not have a shower growing up. I do wonder how long she was able to take care of herself, and I hope that she enjoyed all the things that I know she didn’t do when I was growing up, in her younger years. Yet, for all these years, until the day I was cleaning out my shoe closet, I never thought about my grandmother’s disability and how she must have handled it mentally. It just was never talked about. I am happy to say that I do have lots of photos that show her out with friends on special occasions, and my aunt recently told me that she did take the train to Boston once or twice a year with friends. They would go to Scully Square to see a show and have dinner. She always worked at the playground lawn party when we were little, and she was always our babysitter while my Mom worked. Of course, most of the time, she probably had no idea where we were or what we were up to, and God forbid if she had to come and find us. I think we knew that and didn’t take too much advantage of her. She was always the person that we came home to when we needed something or just wanted to stay inside. She was a wonderful grandmother. I was always grateful for her and loved her dearly. Many times she saved me from my Mother's grip.
I can’t imagine spending 90% of my time in the small space that she called home. I also never heard her complain very often about her circumstances. And as strange as it was, I always felt like she was always there for me, never considering what “being there” meant. I always knew where to find her, and in those days, physical affection was not the norm at my house; I knew, without a doubt, that I could count on her, the same way I know that she knew I would always be available for her each morning and night when it became my turn. She also knew that I would make sure to get done the things that she couldn’t, but we never spoke about her being any different than the rest of us. It is only now, looking back, that I see that her life must have been a struggle.
So here I am all these many years later, thinking about all those shoes in my closet and wondering what she would say? What would she think? She was never shy with her words when something bothered her. I know that she would have thought that they were unnecessary and wasteful. But I would like to think that she would also be happy for me, not so much for all the shoes in every rainbow color, with every size heel and way too many boots. I know for sure that the flip-flops would get me a few choice words, although she never swore that I remember. She did have a tone of voice, though, that made sure you got the message. I hope that she would be happy for me because she knew that I would be able to live my life in some of the ways she would have liked to have lived hers.
She was always supportive of whatever I choose to do, and I’m sure that at some point, she came to terms with her “lot in life,” as they used to say. But still, if it had been possible back then to do more for her, I would have. Why now, why did all of this come to me now? Because since my brother died last year, I have spent a fair amount of time looking back and questioning my role in our family. Did I do enough, say enough, and one thing leads to another. A few years back, I looked into my Mom’s background, and this summer, I went to Nova Scotia to walk the land that my grandfather was born and raised on. I had never done that before, and during all that time, I was writing here thinking, I want my kids to know some of what my life was about…Life stories, I call them…this really is just another life story…but also, I read a book recently that I purchased on our trip to Nova Scotia, and I came across this, “when you’re a kid, your not interested in the people who lived so long ago. I didn’t even know some of their names, so I never really got the story straight. Suddenly, as a senior citizen, I wanted to know more about this.” The book is The Spoon Stealer by Lesley Crewe. I see it in my kids. They really have no idea what our young lives were about, and I sometimes wonder if they will be like me when they get older and we are no longer here to answer their questions. I hope my life stories give them a small glimpse into my younger life with my people. I wished I had not be afraid to ask questions years ago, although I probably wouldn’t have gotten an answer. Lots of secrets back then.
The photo above is of my grandmother and me on my wedding day. I bought her that beautiful dress, and she looked amazing. She enjoyed all the festivities that a wedding brings. I was so proud of her that day because she helped to bring me up. She was my equalizer when I wasn’t getting along with my Mom. I saw her as a loving grandmother, and I hope she was proud of me also. What I know for sure is that neither one of us was paying much attention to her shoes on that day…she was with all of your friends and I was on the floor dancing for her.
“One shoe can change your life...”
“ “You’ve always had the power right there in your shoes; you just had to learn it for yourself.”
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