I still have my first pair of shoes. My mother is not a packrat by any means – in fact she’s been known to dispose of treasured items like old letters from friends – but she saved the soft white leather lace-up boots I wore when I started to walk. My father would have saved the shoebox too, and any inserts that accompanied it, but my little white shoes are in a small Poll-Parrot (Brown Blucher Oxfords) box that had nothing to do with them.

I’m happy to have them. I’m glad they’re not bronzed. They’re the only shoes I retain.

That’s not to say I live unshod. I love to go barefoot but I inhabit a land of pavement and gum and germs and plenty of chemical-laced dirt. I slip my feet on or into some protective gear whenever I leave my house.

Because I walk for transportation, foot comfort is a priority for me. And because my feet grew young and big (size 9 before I was 5′ tall, and size 11 at my full height of 5’6″), shoe fashion was not as obtainable for me as for my small-footed friends. Until the shoe sellers began marketing to black women and trannies, most stores only stocked one pair of size 11s in each style. If I didn’t shop for next winter’s boots by June, I was usually out of luck because the store was out of stock

When we were college roommates, Lisa and I argued about shoes. I was for function but she insisted footwear was ornamental. It took decades of aging for me to win that one.

My father had strange and inconvenient ideas about the subject. Jewish tradition says mourners go barefoot. Dad was never religious, never comfortable in temple, never more than pidgin in Yiddish, but he wouldn’t let us go without foot-covering in the house because it reminded him of mourning. And he believed in the support that he thought only a clunky oxford-type shoe would provide. I lusted for Capezios when I was a little girl. I was into ballet, and Capezio shoes were soft, graceful, feminine, elegant. “Cardboard soles!” Dad scoffed, and he banned them (and even talk about them) from our house, from my feet.

He made me so conscious about how odd bare feet look, that I had some trouble adjusting to California. Suddenly I was surrounded by visible toes. It took me awhile to get used to seeing my own, in summer, in sandals.

I select footwear now for support but also for comfort and coolness. I won’t wear a stiff shoe. And I never wear shoes in my house.