For Sale. Baby Shoes. Never Worn

Hi, I'm Hayley and I'm a Cliché

I’m not much for fashion. In fact, I’ve been dressing in the same combination of Meg Ryan 1998, meets the Gap, bottomed off with Vans or Converse for the last 20 years. The only change being that I wear more black than brown now and I grew my hair out, which is also more gray than brown. I don’t like to shop and if I do, I buy things in entire sets and always from the same boutique local shop that I’ve essentially allowed to dress me for the past 5 years. The entire outfit the model is wearing, from head to foot, I’ll take that. Just don’t make me choose. 

Except the shoes. I have always had an opinion of and deep love for shoes. As I write this, I wonder the following: Do I really, really know what I like, or have I been subconsciously avoiding decision-fatigue my whole life by narrowing my preference to one of three categories: Vans, Converse, Dr. Marten boots? I own a solid dozen pairs of Vans and at least 3 versions of the other two at present, but across my lifetime, I must have owned hundreds of each. In junior high, I paired every outfit with Dr. Marten Mary Jane shoes, with the adorable strap and gold buckle, in three shades (black, brown and cherry wood). 

Every August as back-to-school energy starts seeping in, I have an insatiable desire to call my mother and go to Nordstrom and buy a new pair of Dr. Martens. This shopping outing was our grand back-to-school tradition. All summer I’d saved my chore money, babysitting money, coins found in the couch money, and she’d split the cost of the expensive shoes 50/50. I’m grateful that she made me feel the weight and burden of those shoes, the hours of work it cost to earn them. I treasured them in a way a gift simply is not.

Sometime in my late twenties, fresh off the heels of a broken engagement, my eyes still puffy with tears, cheeks rosy with embarrassment, my mother gifted me a set of new, soft brown bath towels. She told me she was saving them for my wedding, but taught me something profound instead: 

“You don’t need to wait for marriage to have nice towels. You deserve nice things, married or not.”

That sounds so stupid now, but somewhere in my wiring, I’d connected adulthood with marriage, nice sheets, nice dishes, nice towels with being a wife, a mother, a family. 

You deserve nice towels.  

In my own way, this became shorthand for, don’t wait to live; start today. Start now. 

So I use nice towels, nice sheets and Fiesta Ware dishes as my daily dishes. No more holding out for special occasions. Life is the occasion and I want to enjoy things now, not just in case, but because they bring me joy right now. 

Around the same time as the towel incident, I started the slightly quirky hobby of collecting baby shoes. I had no prospects of motherhood, but the dream of it burned bright. I didn’t know if I would ever get married (I did) or become a mother (spoiler, I didn’t), and while I could not control the previous two, I could enjoy something I loved now: the world’s most unnecessary invention of pure joy - Baby Vans, baby Converse, baby shoes.

I love that baby shoes have soles even though the baby wearing them can’t hold up its own head, let alone walk. And babies' feet are often so fat you can’t even get the shoes on anyway. If you do, by some act of God, get the shoes on their feet, you have exactly 16 seconds to get a picture before they kick them off; baby Vans are essentially the world’s most expensive, $40 sidewalk bagel.  

And I don’t care.

I have a drawer in my dresser dedicated to a small collection of baby shoes,  perhaps originally an act of hope in an unknown future, and perhaps, also love of art. One pair of Vans is Hulk green with purple soles and a velcro strap, another similar pair, is all black with a tiny gold Deathly Hallows symbol from Harry Potter across the toe. The last pair I bought were tiny high-top Converse, white with the red and blue stripes along the sole as a twin to my somewhat larger, now well-loved and far less white pair of the same shoe.

Maybe I am crazy, but I just don’t want to miss out; To wait for some unknown future that may never happen, so I make what I can, happen. I have to imagine and wonder about many things in life, but now I know for myself what it feels like to have stupidly, painfully cute matching shoes with a baby. And it’s simply joyful. 

Two years ago I had to say goodbye to motherhood as an option for me permanently.

And today I am giving away the first pair of baby shoes I ever bought. At least I think I am; I’m going to try. The shoes are going to someone I love, for his first child, my first great-nephew. The shoes remind me of my nephew, this new father. Red and black suede high tops, brown rubber soles and a checkered racing print around the top, baby size 5, still with the tag on them.

New shoes for a new beginning. 

New shoes for an end. 

For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.

Maybe I am hoping that something in me heals as I let these shoes go, but I’m expecting and dreading the heartbreak as well.

I think they might be twins, healing and heartbreak, love and loss.

A matching pair. 

Two shoes.

I wear them both.  

The shoes, the drawer.