There isn’t room for one more pair of shoes in my closet. But fortunately I haven’t been out shopping for shoes for a while. You could say it’s thanks to the pandemic. But really? It’s because my feet hurt. And my back hurts. I look at all those beautiful shoes sitting there–the perfect navy blue pumps, my all-time favorite shoes to look at, but the most painful of all; the sexy Italian taupe leather toeless shoes with wooden heels; the fuck-me black high-heeled boots–and realize that every pair has a story. And every story has its shoes.

When I worked as a nurse after college, I wore white nurse shoes. Unattractive but comfortable, probably in part because my feet belonged to a 20 year old, not to a 73 year old woman. I could stand on my feet in them for 8 hours at a time and feel no pain. They were ugly. Not at all sexy. But they were part of the uniform. And I wore them with pride. I wouldn’t mind having a pair of those on my feet right about now.

When I worked as a journalist I wore comfortable flats that worked well with my tweedy reporter look. Brown, boring, but comfortable.

When I had a boyfriend in New York where we trolled the streets at night, I wore the black boots until I couldn’t stand it anymore. I took them off, walked in my stockinged feet back to our hotel and he carried my boots.

When I took my first job in the corporate world, my boss gave me some instructions. “Get your hair cut (I had a big Jew-fro at the time), shave your legs (can you believe it?), learn to put makeup on, and go buy a navy blue wool suit, a white blouse and a red scarf. And get some high heels.”

I kicked and screamed and objected, but he promised me if I did all that and learned his script, I’d make enough money working for him to put my daughter through college. So I decided to try it for six months and see if it really worked. To this day I recall the pain of wearing that dark wool suit and high heels with stockings, in the hot sun, going from door to door, talking to small business owners, so I could pay for my daughter’s education. The pain was worth it. I worked for him for a couple of years and learned everything he had to teach me about looking and acting professional. My daughter went to college and I continued to wear different versions of that same ‘uniform’ for 30 years in my next career as a financial advisor.

Over those many years, I have to admit, I learned to love shopping. I loved dressing up in well-made, beautiful suits and handsome, if painful, shoes. Often I’d come home and realize I’d left my shoes under my desk at work! (My office was across the hall from my home.) But they looked great. ‘No pain, no gain,’ right? Or is it what my high school boyfriend had taught me, ‘You have to sacrifice comfort for beauty.’ In either case, I kept buying shoes. Different shoes looked great with different suits.  Even though they were all black or navy blue. I didn’t need a sales person to convince me. Hems rose and fell over the years. Heels rose and rose. Until one day I realized I was crying in pain.

New Balance became my new best friend. I wore them everywhere except when I was seeing a client. During that time I gritted my teeth, focused on our work together, and felt no pain. But when the appointment ended, the shoes came off. At the end of the day, the suit came off. The shoes came off. The bra came off. The sweats came on, along with the New Balance. It was a huge relief.

And as time went on, as I worked less and less, as I neared retirement, I found myself more and more recapturing my original look. I let my hair grow, I stopped shaving my legs, I stopped wearing makeup, and my many navy blue wool suits and their associated shoes languished in my closet. Now they sit there, abandoned, forlorn, still beautiful, some barely worn, and I don’t have the heart to throw them out or give them away, though I know I’ll never wear them again. Well, maybe, once in a (navy blue) moon.

I’ll never forget that look in her eyes as she lay on the vet’s cold metal examining table. It was hard to look back. I felt like she was asking me, “Can I trust you? Am I going to be okay?” And I knew I was betraying that trust. She was going to die. I was helping her die. And it was breaking my heart. It still makes me cry.

Piglet was the little mutt who was dropped with the rest of her litter on Highway 1 outside the quaint village of Mendocino on the Northern California coast. She was a survivor. She was the smartest little dog–way smarter than her highly pedigreed, adopted brother Dylan, the Irish Setter, who chased the sheep over the cliff by LIttle River and ended up in the animal control truck. Way smarter than her sweet but dumb adopted sister, Flopsie, who we thought would help keep Dylan closer to home. Wrong.

Piglet came to live with us when I was pregnant and taking weaving classes at the Mendocino Art Center in 1970. The teenage girl who had picked her up on the highway asked me to watch her while she went home for the weekend. The girl never returned. Piglet was ours.

She was loved by everyone who met her. Well-known around every town we moved to. She even made it into the Senate records in Olymipia, Washington when we lived there. She liked to wait for the Senators to break for lunch because they would often share their lunch with her. But one time she followed them into Chambers and was the subject of a floor debate about whether they should have her removed. I don’t know what the final vote was. But she came home, wagging her tail happily.

Piglet and my daughter, Tosha, grew up together. The three of us lived with another woman and her dog, and the two dogs used to run out the front door of the house to greet the mailman. One day Piglet picked up too much speed and flew over the flower box, landing two stories below on the ground. I guess she broke her back because her back legs no longer worked. Tosha and I took her to the vet. He couldn’t fix her. And we didn’t want her to suffer. We made the hard decision, trying to do what was best for her. Our eyes filled with tears. But her eyes–that sad, scared, hopeful look she gave me– haunts me to this day.

I’m going to have lunch with my pregnant sort-of-step-daughter, Annie, in San Francisco today. We will wear masks (though I haven’t yet mastered the art of eating with a mask on) and social distance. No hugs. Nor am I sure where we will find a place to eat. But we need to talk. Or rather, I sense that she needs to talk. Sadly, her mother died 5 years ago. I think she needs a mother. Figure. A mother figure.

I was well on my way to my second successful divorce.

I can tell she needs to talk because her father has always been her favorite person in the world, and vice versa, but she has been really nasty to him lately, behavior I’ve only seen before from her younger, bratty sister. Anyway, when a kid starts being nasty to the person who loves them the most, they’re asking for attention. For connection. Right? It would be nice if her father wanted to provide this attention, but he’s a lawyer.

Annie is just turning 40. A milestone of sorts. Is 40 the new 30? She’s about to have her second baby. She is married to a man with no ambition other than to make a killing with his investments. He is, however, a wonderful father. And he’s cute. And maybe he will make a killing. But it would be nice if, in the meantime, he earned some money. She, on the other hand, is an ambitious and talented attorney who could have made a killing working for one of the biggest law firms in the country but chose, instead, to work for the public good in the Department of Justice. Of course these days one has to ask oneself if working in the DOJ is still serving the public good. Still…

When I turned 40 I was well on my way to my second successful divorce. The first one had gone well enough, meaning he and I remained friends and shared our daughter. I could see the second divorce on the horizon. I was looking forward to making a go of it on my own in my new career. My daughter, my only child, would soon be graduating high school, attending college, and I was ready to be free, to travel and have the adventures I’d passed up by marrying early. For me, 40 would be the start of something big.  For Annie, I fear it looks to her like the end.

Gail Sheehy, the author of the long-ago book Passages, talked about how 40 was the time you reevaluated everything. All the decisions you made. Who you’d married, what career you’d picked, where you lived. You re-evaluated and made some big changes. This was old hat to me. At 30 I’d done all that once. Not only had I left my first marriage, but I’d also left my career as a psychiatric nurse to become a journalist, and moved from Olympia, Washington to Oakland, California. So at 40 I was totally comfortable reconsidering my second husband, and also a new career. I was fearless. The future was all about new beginnings.

But for Annie? In today’s world? In a country whose promise is fading fast, with a belly ready to pop out a second child into a state (California) that is burning up, and a home that’s getting too small for her growing family. And a husband, well…she needs to talk. I just need to listen. This is a new kind of passage. My advice –my world–is outdated.

It was spring, 1962. This is where it started.

When she started to see gray hairs appear as she sat at stoplights and looked in the rear view mirror, she saw the future and started pulling the stray grays out.

“What the hell happened to your hair?” her father said as the teenage girl came down the stairs to meet her new date.

She didn’t reply, but she felt her chest tighten. After all, what are you supposed to say to that? She thought she looked pretty terrific. And she wanted to look great for this first date. She’d spent the afternoon and all her baby sitting money in the beauty salon.

Her mother came out of the kitchen wiping her hands on her apron, having not heard the initial interchange. “How do you like Emily’s hair, Herb?”

“Mom…” Emily said, in that voice meant to shut her up. Someone, presumably her date, knocked on the door. Nobody moved to answer it. Her father left the room to watch the ballgame, shaking his head in what looked to Emily like disgust.

“Do I really look that bad?” she asked her mother after her father left the room, eyes tearing up.

“You look fine,” her mother said, though she had a hard time looking at this girl who, until that afternoon, had had a head full of honey colored curls and now had stick-straight hair. “Did he say something?” She looked toward her husband.

The girl nodded, tears spilling. The knock came again.

“Don’t cry,” her mother said. “It’s not about your hair. It’s about your date. You know your father doesn’t want you to grow up. It makes him feel old. You look fine. Go wash your face. I’ll answer the door.”

The date was a dud, but the girl grew up and met a lot of boys. Most of them never noticed her hair. Her girlfriends, however, and her mother, always noticed. It was a kind of a secret handshake they all shared when they first saw one another. “Oh, Emily! I love your hair!” or “Samantha! You got a great cut!” or “Peggy! I love you–a redhead!” Complimenting each other’s hair was the password to their friendship. If you’d messed up in some other way, say you didn’t like the dinner they’d prepared, or you’d maybe made a snarky remark about one of their boyfriends, you could always fix it with a good hair comment.

Emily’s hair forever remained the most important part of her appearance. In college she rolled it on orange juice cans every night before bed to try to relax the curl. To no avail. Humidity was its enemy.

By the 1970s she had come to terms with her curls; had come to love them, actually, and worn them loose in a ‘shag’ for years.

In the 1990s she found a new hairstylist who asked her how committed she was to the 1970s. Emily surrendered. He cut her hair very short to make it spiky using ‘product’ but as soon as it grew a fraction of an inch, the curl was too heavy to spike.

When she started to see gray hairs appear as she sat at stoplights and looked in the rear view mirror, she saw the future and started pulling the stray grays out. But eventually there were too many. As it began to turn white, she dyed it black and white and had to change her whole wardrobe, which had forever been autumn colors.

As gravity wrinkled her skin beyond the help of moisturizers and her breasts began to sag, she realized her hair was the only thing she could really change. At 72, she looked in the mirror and refused to see her mother. She put purple, blue and apple green in her otherwise white curls. People stopped her on the street, telling her they loved her hair. Her grandsons thought she was cool. The boys, meanwhile, spent a lot of time in front of the mirror, fussing with their own hair. The eight year old had his father shave SF Giants into the back of his hair. The eleven year old grew his hair to shoulder length like his favorite baseball player. And the oldest had a pompadour. Her father and mother had gotten old and died. They’d each had a head full of wild white hair.

The last thing her mother had said to her was, “Emily. I like your hair like that.”