Feet

If The Shoe Fits…
I hate my feet. Actually, I hate feet in general, but mine especially. The juxtaposition of it all being that I really love sandals - and they sort of showcase my feet in a way. Now I realize that, in the grand scheme of things with war and famine and no good movies at the box office this is a terribly small thing. But, like any woman with a major flaw on the canvas of her body, it can be almost debilitating.
When you hate your feet (as I do, we’ve now established), summer can be rough. I’m stubborn enough to still wear the sandals, but if someone comments on my shoes my toes retract self-consciously like tiny turtles retreating to their warm shells. What if they notice my cuticles? I fret. Or my disgustingly cracked and hardened heels? No to mention the sheer acreage of foot, naturally. At 5’6 I wear a woman’s size 10 shoe - I’m not sure why my feet are so large, possibly because they need to balance out the rest of me, who knows. So summer comes along, I manage to find three or four pairs of lovely sandals that fit and I spend all of my time trying to camouflage the feet inside. I wear my pants longer at the back to cover my heels. I paint my toenails in a neutral shade so as not to call attention to the feet. But every once in a while, someone will catch a glimpse of them…and we can never be friends again.
My mother, wise woman that she is, has declared she’s ‘had enough of it‘. She has lovely feet, by the way. She goes for pedicures once a month - and just this week, as a thoughtful little ‘surprise’ to me, forced me to go with her. And boy, do I mean forced. I made up excuses not to go, I said I’d have a manicure instead, I couldn’t leave the kids, anything I could to stop this invasive intimacy I was having thrust upon me. Because feet are very intimate, aren’t they? Letting a stranger that close to your feet is like letting the Postal carrier snoop through your underwear drawer - it’s just wrong on a lot of levels. And I have long since given up on being a girly-girl even if my mother refuses to give up for me.
But…well, she was giving up her lucrative gift certificate for me. I decided it wasn’t very sporting of me to refuse. I just prayed to God I would get someone who couldn’t speak English working on my feet so I wouldn’t understand her when she started weeping to the heavens at the sight of my heels. Not so. We arrived at this tiny little spa with soft music, a nice big fireplace in the entry way, and beautiful smiling women in impeccable black pants and t-shirts who all spoke perfect English. I confessed the moment I met the discreet young lady who would be working on my feet that she was in for a bumpy ride. And then told her again. And again. And then made an ill-timed joke about her needing a chainsaw for my feet. I hoped to scare her off her job, you see. But she was a tough cookie, just smiled breezily and told me not to worry, she could guarantee there had been worse cases than mine. I doubted it, but I’m nothing if not a trooper. I doffed my clunky hiking boots and socks in favor of soft white slippers and allowed myself to be drawn to the back room. Which was like an apothecary for women only. Every surface was covered with special lotions and foreign tools of beauty. On the ground lay two bubbling, scented foot baths for my Mother and I to start off with. Like an appetizer. Oh…oh,.. my. Why had I waited so long, I ask you, why?? The sheer decadent glory of it! My mother and I rolled up our jeans, ordered coffees from the still smiling aestheticians (and they were even genuine smiles!) and soaked for 20 minutes. Then there came the foot massage, the perfectly done nails, the scented creams…if only they served liquor I would never have to leave!
Well, I won’t divulge any more of the trade secrets after that, but suffice it to say I’m hooked. I don’t know how I will hold back until my next visit - my feet, for the first time in my life, look beautiful. Really beautiful. And they feel soft as a baby’s bottom. When we got home I forced each of the boy’s to check out my new feet. They pretended not to care, of course, but I could tell that they were really impressed. Sandal season, here I come!