Everyday Ellie: Twenty Years of Shoes

This morning as P prepared to leave for work, we looked out the window and there was a mom pushing a stroller. Mom was 30-something, dressed for a brisk walk wearing her trainers and lycra and Patagonia. With her was a two year old little girl wearing pink jacket, tights, dress, bow-in-hair, and.. sparkly light up shoes! It was amusing in part because said little girl was face-down on the side of the road in the damp pine straw that perpetually lines the street. She seemed to be throwing a little tantrum. In front of her was a PINK baby-doll carriage. We speculated that she had insisted on pushing her own baby-doll carriage and then mid-way round the block, tired of it and wanted to be pushed herself. Mom scarcely gave her a glance. She was standing there overtly ignoring the bow-head toddler and.. texting. But this is not about judgement or even about mom. It's about the sparkly, light-up-when-you-walk tennies bow-head was wearing.

It makes you think back..

A. has always been a shoe-aholic. Shoe-addict. Shoe junkie. Since she was old enough to point, run, embrace, and say "mine". I pretty much avoided the mall with her. I had my own shopping junkie issues to deal with, and for the past 20 years this addiction has centered not around my own needs or wardrobe (can you spell p a t h e t i c?), but around hers. Yes, I still buy her stuff, and yes, tons of shoes, which anyone who knows her will attest that she needeth NOT. Definitely, we have gone way beyond the concept of 'need' here, and moved into the realm of.. I don't know.. out-of-control?

Looking back, it's been Twenty Years of Shoes, among, ahhhhh, other things.

For starters.. delicate little baby shoes (these are from Etsy..) with no soles to speak of. Special shoes purchased for A.'s christening..

silk baby shoes

Then there were the first pair of walkers, purchased from Stride-Rite. the theory was that you needed to buy sturdy leather shoes as the baby learned to walk to assure proper foot alignment. The pediatrician sort of debunked that, however and said that little tennis shoes would do just fine. Nonetheless.. these were always worn with little frilly socks, usually white but sometime matching the obligatory bow in the hair or the dress purchased from Raspberries..

Then came the age of insistence and the selection of a sorts of gawdawful foot apparel including, yes, sparkly tennies, sparkly ballet flats, Disney shoes, glow-in-the-dark shoes, rain boots with Little Mermaid on them, etc etc. Here are a few of them, but by no means an exhaustive list..

One Ruby Lane Infant Toddler Girls Red Polka Dot Sparkle Bow Shoes 2-7 - photo.

One Ruby Lane Infant Toddler Girls Red Polka Dot Sparkle Bow Shoes 2-7 - photo.

Luna International Boots Pink Shoes Toddler 5/6 - Little Girls 11/12 - photo.

Laura Ashley Pink Floral Beaded Velcro Strap Tennis Shoes Girls 7-2 - photo.

Photo of Baby shoes, toddler shoes and girls shoes from Sophias Style

Then we started ballet and soccer. A's Dad was her coach for several years. Of course, much to Dad's ... ahh .. dismay? he did not have a soccer star. She would stand in the middle of field and twirl, leap, and arabesque, far outsized by some of her stockier, sturdier teammates who she mostly.. feared, I guess would be the right word. Yeah, feared. But she stuck it out for several years, so in addition to regular school and church shoe purchases, the closet floor swelled with soccer shoes and ballet shoes of all description.

Just thought this pic was fun..

Then of course the first search for pointe shoes.. followed by perhaps 10 more versions of pointe shoes, always searching for the shoe that would be wearable by a girl with very long toes. Long toes are a virtue for the modern dancer, who typically dances barefoot. Ballet dancer once she begins pointe? Not so much. The girls who fare best with pointe shoes have feet shaped a bit like shoe boxes-- short toes that are all one length, and not especially narrow...

Eliminating all the iterations of tennis shoes along the way, and there were several, we moved into boot phase somewhere in middle school. First was UGGs, and you all know what they look like, so I won't give you a visual. But the good day was when A could finally wear- and appreciate- my vintage (ouch) Frye boots, purchased when I was around 19 or 20 and at the University of Illinois. It was the first year Frye made boots for women. These Fryes paved the way for a long line of boots to come.. and still coming.. there are never enough, it seems, to suit the varying needs of a 20 year old.. not to mention the high heeled booties and various versions of night-on-the town foot wear..