The first mistake I made was choosing the sensible pumps that were so old, they’d gone out of style and then came back in again.
The second mistake I made was wearing them while hoofing it from Port Authority to a midtown restaurant for a business dinner last night.
I move way too fast for old shoes.
By the time I got to the restaurant, the soles had torn away and a hole was forming in the right shoe. The rubber tips had come off the heels, which I could hear click-clack-clicking to the beat of my iPod–Ace Frehley’s “New York Groove.”
I’m back, CLICK back in the New York groove CLACK…
How these stupid shoes had lasted this long, I don’t know. I guess when I bought them–when my kids were little–I moved to the beat of a slower song. Somehow, these shoes survived weddings and rushed dinners with a toddler on my hip and Mother’s Day teas at the preschool with my legs crammed under tiny little tables.
But they couldn’t make it through last night. By the time I’d dashed through Port Authority to catch the 10:08 home, my shoes were so battered, it felt like I was running barefoot. Which would have been easier, frankly. When I got home, I threw them in the garbage.
They no longer fit my style.
This morning, I rolled the garbage can to the curb (in comfy sneakers) and ditched these relics of my early motherhood years, bought back when sensible mattered more than style because I needed to be able to carry 30 pounds of squirming kid and a packed diaper bag up the stairs to see the Easter Bunny.
Every layer of these shoes that I left on Manhattan sidewalks last night released me from the old, from that which no longer fits. But I should have gotten rid of them a long time ago.
For moms, the sensible shoe years are really quite short. Yet we keep them thinking that’s who we are. We are so-and-so’s mom, and we’re here to buy light-up sneakers. Or soccer cleats. Or heels for the prom. We’ll just wear these old shoes because everyone else’s matter more.
Not today though. Today, I’m going out and buying new shoes that can keep up with me.
Me, and Ace Frehley.
