Snow Shoes

It was a sunny Los Angeles Saturday winter morning, the kind that makes a transplanted New Englander like myself feel guilty for getting away with something (for which they'd pay later).  My mother was visiting from New Hampshire.  As we got out of the car en route to Shabbat services, the sun struck my shoes.  My mother took note, muttering, "You are really not a New Englander any more." Shame washed over me.

This was my first public outing in the shoes.  They had caused me anguish when I bought them at the Santa Monica Third Street Promenade the previous week. They were espadrille-ish, steep crepe heels, gold satin cloth, little sequins and fake crystals glued on. They were pretty, and girlish, and frivolous. They revealed the vanity of their wearer for all to see. Made in India, they would not last, like whatever fading beauty I had left.  I loved those shoes, but I couldn't let myself buy them.  But then I did, and I sweated all twenty-five dollars I spent on them (that should have gone to something more useful).

A New England woman, no matter what my mother says, never gets over her New England sensibilities, when it comes to footwear and all fashion.  I have long lusted in secret for those strappy little patent leather Italian sandals in the J.Crew catalogue, but I know mud season would make a public mockery of my illicit desires.  I restrain myself, as is the New England way.

New England women don't entirely surrender the impulse to make their feet pretty.  LLBean and Merrill have come up with a few feminizing details (if you look carefully).  The other day when I picked my step-mother up for a music rehearsal, I realized I'd parked her into the mud and offered to move the car first.  She was wearing house shoes, a vaguely Mary Jane embellishment on the basic hiking-boot sole.  "Oh, don't worry!" she replied cheerfully.  "My shoes have rubber toes!"

A New England woman perusing her options in a shoe store examines the height and material of the heel for how it will stack up in snow drifts and muddy trenches.  For how it will exhibit the shape of her ankles and calves?  Not so much.  In a baffling triumph of marketing, though, the Australian company Uggs has convinced women across the world, even those in Los Angeles with no climatic impediments to good taste, that a shapeless animal skin was high female foot fashion.  I'm not a believer.  But I have to give Uggs some credit.  For New England women who actually need that shearling warmth but can't entirely surrender their vanity, Uggs offers sequined winter boots, in silver or pink!  That is, if you can convince your mother to buy them for you.  (How do you get mud out of sequins?)

There's a quick cheat in acting known as "shoe acting."  Change the shoes, transform yourself.  Watch the kid who slides his feet into his mother's heels for the clearest illustration of the power of the shoe. Close your eyes and try on a pair of heavy military boots.  A ballet slipper.   Your dad's polished leather work shoes...  The other day in the locker room at the Aquatic Center, I noticed a heavy-set older woman pulling up her masculine white tube socks over bluish calves, then lacing up her hefty leather walking shoes.  Who would she become if she slid on some Dolce Vita heels?   I'd like to see the faces when she walked into the St. Paddy's day corned beef supper at the Volunteer Fire Department in those numbers.

This winter I'm working hard to renew my New England credentials, diminished by my 27-year sojourn in climates that degrade one's character.  We picked one of history's longest coldest winters, reminding me that warmth is the urgent first priority of footwear.  But just when I thought I was toughening up, sacrificing my vanity, as is my duty, proving myself a real New Englander again, I noticed a mother at the kids' school in Cornish who only ever seemed to wear flip-flops.  For real?  My feet, like my character (are they separable?), had been wrecked by excessive flip-flop wearing during my time away.  And yet here she was, in sub-zero temperatures, bare feet in cute little preppy flip-flops. Was this a brazen display of vanity, or testament to the highest degree of New England cred -- imperviousness to cold?

"My feet just burn hot," she explained without seeking to impress.  Sigh! I will never be worthy...