Finally, a walk in her shoes
She must have bought them in August, that time when hope was still on the horizon: simple, white-bottomed sneakers marketed to boomer moms like herself. I’m sure they were on sale.
They were her “retirement sneakers.” The kind that come with plans written from daydreams and limitless possibilities — even for someone who was having increased difficulty walking more than a few steps at a time. Maybe, to her, they were always symbolic.
She showed them to her sister-in-law, my Auntie M, on a Friday afternoon in early September, just after her retirement paperwork had been processed. “I’m retired and you’re not,” she teased, in her scratchy, sarcastic voice.
Those were her last words. Mom died the following Tuesday, just four days into retirement and four years into life as a cancer patient-turned-survivor-turned-patient.
And her New Balance shoes have been sitting in my closet, crisp and clean for 15 years now.
She’d bought the ones with a little orange N, a nod to Syracuse University, where I was a senior in college that fall. She’d probably planned — or at least hoped — to wear them to my graduation. What other trails had she meant to travel with those laces double knotted on her feet? What parts of the world had she hoped to see?
With every move to a new apartment — and every year’s spring cleaning — I pull them down and am paralyzed by their pristine perfection. Buried by the burdensome weight of their untapped potential. I can’t bring myself to part with them, but I’ve also never been able to step into them. These are not the shoes you throw on to get the mail or run to Kroger. They were bought for grander purposes.
In February, I gave birth to my daughter. She has my mother’s name, and — for now, at least — her faraway blue eyes.
I’d worried, at first, that she would make me miss my mother in new, fresh ways as I learn what it means to be on the other side of this relationship. But instead, she has helped me find some peace.
I have realized, finally, that my mother didn’t need to see where I end up or what kind of adult I grow into to be proud of me or love me. She already knew exactly who I was. And she knew an unconditional love for me that I could only guess at until I felt it myself.
And as I reorganized the top shelf of my closet one day on maternity leave, carving out a space to keep a box of hospital bracelets and baby photos, I spotted the shoes. But this time, when I picked them up, instead of pulsating in my hands like a telltale heart, they felt the way I know they must have felt to Mom all those years ago: like an opportunity.
I didn’t need a perfect day. And I didn’t need the perfect trail. When I slipped them on and double knotted them the way Mom always did, it wasn’t because I was planning to hike Kilimanjaro, or some grand bucket list adventure.
It was just a Wednesday, in Houston — a city she’d never been to, but one I’ve called home now for seven years. It was the last day of my maternity leave, and I loaded my daughter into her stroller for our leisurely morning walk around my neighborhood the same way I had done every morning around 9:30 a.m. for several months.
But on this morning, I wore Mom’s shoes — so she could walk with me and my daughter.
And finally, I knew I’d found their perfect purpose.