Proper Shoes

My sister is visiting with her border collie, Star. They are competing in an agility trial, the Harvest Moon Classic, just down the road from me. They arrive in a Chevy Tahoe Z71. It has 22-inch wheels plus lift for off-road clearance. I have a dedicated garage that came with my condo, and I move my little Honda to the parking lot and reconfigure the cardboard boxes stacked along the walls. Eventually, her truck fits.

She is three years older, a doctor, a psychiatrist, and retired with a sizeable pension. I am 66, still the little sister who fancies herself a writer and therefore always underemployed. We have not seen each other in eight, possibly nine years, and before that it was sporadic. Only weddings. Before those, we had a dry spell without contact for 20-plus years.

“We’re estranged,” I’d tell people. “A misunderstanding, a mishap, something about a dishwasher, toddlers, and steak knives.” The incident now feels remote, like an overinflated helium balloon that slipped from my reach. Too far away, too fuzzy to see clearly, surely not worth the trouble to retrieve.

And anyway, today it is sunny, like most days in California, and we are 3,000 miles from Massachusetts, where we grew up. My sister now lives on a mountain near a famous ski resort, and her attire leans toward luxury athleisure brands. She wears a Rolex on her wrist and a diamond stud in her nose.

We are going shopping. Shopping for shoes. In the two days since she arrived, she has grown increasingly alarmed about the health of my feet. “You need proper shoes,” she says. She shows me her on-the-road collection: running shoes, trail shoes, waterproof shoes, slip-on sneakers she uses for slippers. “You’re not a kid anymore. You’re going to wind up crippled and needing a walker.”

“I’ve got great feet,” I say as I grab the overhead grip handle to climb into her truck’s passenger seat. “Strong feet.” I wear flip flops in summer. UGG boots in winter. And a barefoot-style shoe with a 3mm flexible sole for work. “I can stand on one foot. I can balance on my tippytoes. Can you do that?”

“You’re limping. You can barely walk.”

Yes, after a recent stint as a winery hostess (Social Security doesn’t pay out well if you never held a decent-paying job), running around outdoors on a cement crush pad, I developed pain in my Achilles tendons, which, unfortunately, caused me to limp and wince with every step. My remedy for this was to go with even thinner shoes to further build up my foot and toe strength. Only a few weeks ago, I bought two pairs of thin, flat shoes. No support, more like wrapping my feet in cloth.

“That makes absolutely no sense,” my sister tells me. “You’re not a trained doctor. When you have medical questions, come to me.”

I nod (I’m the easygoing one), but I wonder what a retired psychiatrist could possibly know about podiatry.

Her Chevy Tahoe rides higher than my Honda, and I have a great view from up here. Santa Rosa, where I moved in 2020, is a largish city, and it has had its ups and downs. The Flamingo Hotel still sports a fifty-foot tower topped by a neon-pink bird, and the Coddingtown Mall sign, a seventy-foot pillar adorned with a silver Googie-inspired spire, still spins around and around. But the gilt of the ’60s is wearing off, has worn off, and homeless camps appear overnight: the creek trail, the 101 underpass, the IHOP parking lot.

Our first stop is Fleet Feet, and I can’t find any sneakers I could tolerate wearing that are in my size and in stock. I do find a pair of cushioned socks I like (neon stripes: yellow, orange, purple, blue, aquamarine). My sister approves of their padding, and I find the fit surprisingly comfortable (I hate socks).

We have two more stores to check out, but I’d rather go home and have a bite to eat. Star competes tomorrow, and I don’t think it’s a good idea to leave her cooped up in my condo all day.

“Have some of my crackers,” my sister says, pointing to her floral Vera Bradley backpack.

“It won’t hold me. I’m starving.”

“Hunger is all in your head.”

She has always been thinner than me. And a runner, although now she walks to prevent further stress injuries and only runs in the agility ring when competing with Star. I have always felt my weight was a failing on my part. The roundness of my face. The plump rolls under my armpits. A waistline that doesn’t pinch in. Growing up, I could never get my body to look like the girls in the fashion magazines.

The second shoe store is in the downtown mall. Once shuttered during the pandemic, it is now quite lively with kiosks in the center aisle selling cell phone cases, jewelry, sunglasses. Foot Locker is on the first level, and I am curious about Crocs, which are rated as a good pick for Achilles tendonitis and approved by my sister to wear about the house. I try on a yellow pair. (Why? I don’t know.) My foot slips in and out easily. My toes can wiggle. I don’t need socks. But then the sales kid tells me they shrink in the sun. Possibly multiple sizes. Why exactly would I spend 50 bucks on some plastic/rubbery-type contraption like that?

I am really hungry now. My blood sugar has dropped. I’m a little shaky. I ate all the crackers. Still, we have one more store to go. I look out the window as we cruise Cleveland Avenue. I moved to Santa Rosa during the pandemic and as the Glass Fire burned through 67,484 acres across Napa and Sonoma counties. Back then, the streets were empty of people and traffic. The sky was dark, a burnt-orange tinge. Fluffy ash covered the world like dirty snow. Now, on the sidewalks, growing homeless camps are reinforced with bike wheels, shopping carts, tarps. A person sleeps under a blanket, his large dirt-creased soles sticking out.

~

Beck’s shoe store is the real deal. A middle-aged salesperson greets us as we enter. “How can I help you today?” He measures my feet, scans my feet, suggests what shoes I should wear and what shoes I should not. He brings out multiple styles and sizes and widths, and he slips on shoes for me, laces them securely, repeats. This is a career. Not an after-school gig. This is how I remember it was back when we were kids, shopping at Thom McAn’s on Main Street. I walk out with two pairs of super-padded running shoes, special foam inserts, rubber heel cups, and padded socks (I refused to buy the compression socks my sister handed me), totaling close to $500, a sum I couldn’t afford.

At home, I bemoan how easily I was swayed to purchase—not one, but two—pairs of shoes. I look down at my feet, at my new runners, the soles so large they spill out the bottoms like pontoon floats.

My sister tells me a story about a man she knows. He was an athlete as a kid, a hockey player, then an avid skier who sustained multiple injuries. Despite doctor’s orders, he continued to play hard, believing he knew what was best for his body. He now uses a walker at the age of forty. “Is that what you want?”

My sister was always more farsighted than me. She paid attention in school. She got good grades. When she turned seventeen, she was gone: college, medical school, post-graduate residency, psychiatry residency. She married, bought a house, then bought a second house. She had two children. I dropped out of college (they told me to leave). Worked in the basement of an animal hospital, swabbing floors, disinfecting cages, and cremating the dead in an industrial-size, gas-powered incinerator. (I still scan job openings for this kind of work.) I had one daughter out of wedlock (a term used back then) by a no-name father (my term).

~

The Harvest Moon Classic Agility Trial is held at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds in the Cow Palace, a covered dirt arena with room to run two rings simultaneously. Star will compete over three days, a total of seven times, but each run is 30-40 seconds, so we spend most of our time sitting in the far corner of the arena in our little campsite, which my sister stocked with rugs, chairs, coolers, and snacks. We watch people and dogs for hours. My sister points out shoes, proper shoes, worn by supposedly sensible people. Despite this, more than a few walk around with a brace strapped to their foot or ankle. A woman with a mini schnauzer in the camp site next to us tells us how she ruptured her Achilles tendon. “I heard a loud pop.” She wears a thick, black boot, which has multiple buckles, an ankle-flexion adjustment wheel, and an inflatable pump that fills an inner sock with forced air, rendering her foot immoveable. My sister looks at me and raises an eyebrow, as if to say, See? This could happen to you.

Agility is a team sport. The dogs run a timed obstacle course, which depending on the class, might involve tunnels, seesaws, weave poles, jumps, etc. The handler guides the dog through the course, designed by each judge, so every run is a new challenge. My sister studies the blueprints. She walks the course, her feet memorizing each step. Star waits patiently, but alert, inside her heavy-duty aluminum, bubblegum-pink crate. She is small, agile, and swift. When my sister unlatches the crate door, the skin beneath Star’s sleek fur pulses with anticipation.

My sister devolves into an overwrought wreck. She is unsure how she will control all the variables around her: barking dogs, running people, the ticking clock. She bundles Star up in her arms, smashes her against her chest, and chants, Calm, Calm, but the dog’s legs and head keep popping out like a game of whack-a-mole. The CBD rapid-acting melts I give my sister don’t seem to help.

Despite her pre-competition jitters, my sister is mentally and physically prepared, and after she takes Star’s leash off in the ring, she breathes deeply and embodies her most competent self. Staying two broad steps ahead of Star, she calls out: Left, No, Jump, Right, Up, Stay, Come here. I have goosebumps. I clap, hands over my head, as they step out of the ring. They win a rainbow of ribbons.

Before my sister leaves for home, we talk about her and Star coming back every year to visit and compete in the Harvest Moon Classic. “It will be grand,” I say, and I mean it. Our parents are dead. Our children are grown. The helium balloon has deflated. When she and Star leave, I miss them. My home, my little condo, feels empty. I look down at my shoes, which she has told me not to remove until I climb into bed. I’ve been wearing them for days now, and I am no longer tripping over the pontoons. Still, I imagine standing barefoot on the ground, my feet free, my toes spreading. I undo the laces, slip out of the shoes, peel off the thick socks, and walk around. My calf muscles feel like they’ve atrophied. It hurts to flex my toes. I can’t roll up on my tippytoes. My arches creak. This is how it would surely feel if I’d worn plaster casts on my feet.

I throw the shoes in the back of my closet—but soon, my Achilles tendons hurt, and I remember the illustration my sister showed me on her cell phone of a ruptured Achilles tendon, the tissue frayed. A red spiky blotch superimposed over the location to symbolize pain. Then I remember her friend, the ice hockey player, the skier, now needing a walker. I remember the woman at the agility trial with her schnauzer, and how she described the pop in her feet. And mostly, I remember my sister’s words as she left for home—Take care of your feet!—which I interpret to mean, I love you.