When I was a kid, the problem was getting me to wear shoes at all. Except for church and school, I ran barefoot. The first thing I did when I hit the front door was to kick off my shoes. The bottoms of my feet were so tough and callused that I could run on the gravel and small stones of our driveway without discomfort, while my parents and older brother winced on my behalf. I don't know why my well-shod mother allowed me to go barefoot when I went downtown on short errands with her, but I can still remember my embarrassed brother looking at me with distaste and saying: "Do I have to be seen with her? She's barefoot!"
When I was about 5, I was asked to be the flower girl at a favorite cousin's wedding. I was to wear a long, pink taffeta dress, and white Mary Janes with white socks. Came the morning of the wedding, my grandmother was there to help me dress. She took one look at my feet and ordered me to sit on the side of the tub while she scrubbed the bottoms of my feet.
"But I had a bath last night," I wailed, "and we washed my hair and rolled it on rags and everything!"
"You are NOT going to put those feet into clean socks," she snapped. I tried to convince her that the calluses on my feet weren't in the least dirty, until I saw the washcloth she had used to scrub. It was my first lesson in the fact that real dirt requires more than a gentle swipe to remove it.
"Sheesh," I groaned. "No one would ever know anyway. I mean the bottoms of my feet are going to be inside my shoes!"
She gave me a scathing look. "But you and I would know, wouldn't we?" she said, and ended the conversation.
These days I rarely go barefoot, and my feet are no longer tough. I baby them with expensive walking shoes or soft slippers, and as my arthritis progresses, I worry about my toes, which are so far unscathed. A friend who has diabetes tells me that she must use lotion on her feet daily, and I have decided to do the same for mine. Aging, thinning skin needs all the help it can get, and cracks in the heels hurt like the devil.
Thank goodness that some shoe manufacturers take comfort into consideration. Birkenstocks, of course, are an old standby, and there are several other brands of shoes that are actually made with consideration for the human foot. SAS and Ecco come to mind, and I'm sure there are others. Unfortunately, they tend to be very expensive.
However, these days we seniors are more than ever determined to remain healthy and independent; we exercise and take care of ourselves better than any earlier generation, and we're living longer. If saving our pennies for one really good pair of shoes will help to keep us mobile, we'll do it. But wouldn't it be great if the manufacturers of less expensive brands twigged to the market and began making softer, lower, more cushiony (but still attractive) shoes with the older buyer in mind?
It seems to me that as the baby boomers age, the shoe manufacturers are going to have to consider adding new lines, with basic design changes to accommodate aging feet. After all, one cannot wear sandals for every occasion. Right now, anybody who could give me a soft spectator pump with a 1-inch heel and a round toe that comes with a narrow heel would have an easy sale at just about any price. It would, in fact, be a shoo-in.
©Julia Sneden for SeniorWomen.com
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