Just for Kicks

I have no taste for shoes. I own five pairs, but I only wear two of them. One pair are white leather Keds, and the other are from City Opera Thrift Shop. The City Opera Thrift ones look like Keds, but have red rubber toes. They’re easy to slip on. I don’t mind their twee-ness, and I like that they’re fit for a clown-in-training.

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When I was born, my nana knew that I was going to be beautiful. She told my mother to be careful with me. She told my mother to never tell me that I was pretty. Instead I heard about how smart I was all the time.

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My nana was left-handed, and I was left-handed too, until she trained me not to be. I don’t remember the training period, but apparently she guided my pencil into my right hand so I would never have to live with left-handed inconveniences. She grew up in the Bronx in the Great Depression, where there were no left-handed scissors. Teachers didn’t know what to do with her.

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Sometimes my nana wore black Ferragamo lace-ups, but mostly she wore Keds. She had them in tan and in white and in navy blue. She lived at 880 Fifth Avenue, and she lived in her Keds. We’d go to the park, to see Alice in Wonderland or watch the kids with their mechanical boats, and she’d sit on the bench in her fancy slacks, tapping her feet in those beloved Keds.

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The afternoon before my nana died, I took a pair of her shoes home with me. I didn’t tell my mother. I knew that it would be real if I did—that she was about to die. She was a size 10. I am a size 7.5, so I kept her shoes under my bed in a plastic bin from Target. They came with me to college and lived in my freshman dorm room. Sometimes I smelled them, but only when I was drunk.

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Somewhere between my sophomore and junior year, my nana’s shoes went missing. They had been through a lot. They traveled from New York to Los Angeles, and they
survived two break-ups and a bout of bed bugs. At that time, I liked wearing French Sole ballet flats and sometimes heels from Topshop or Zara. I didn’t know how to be myself at school. When I graduated, I felt I could go back to being me.

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I bought my first adult pair of Keds at Tip Top Shoes on the Upper West Side when I was visiting New York one spring after I graduated. They looked and smelled so good, even though they didn’t smell like my nana. They made me feel beautiful.

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Today I wear my Keds with Levi’s and a wool coat in the fall, and with thin white tube socks and a dress in the summer. They make me feel like I am both sensible and spontaneous. They make me feel close to my nana again.

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Nana thought the best job in the whole world is the lady who picks the names for nail polish. We knew we could do better than Scarlet Starlet or Lacy Not Racy. We’d walk home from Hebrew school—her in her Keds, picking out new names and colors—and then order Chinese food and watch As Time Goes By with our favorite actress, Judi Dench. I’d rub nana’s feet.

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My nana died without knowing I’d become a writer. I wish she could come see one of my shows or read one of my articles. I wish we could talk about it, and I wish she was here to scratch my back afterwards. I wish I could introduce her to my next boyfriend.

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I don’t have the same thick hair she had; I don’t have her long legs. I have traces of her cheekbones, of her nose. I don’t know how to move through the world elegantly and graciously and curiously like she did. But I can wear my Keds, and I can spend the day in Central Park and get spat out on Fifth Avenue as the sun sets, and suddenly she’s with me, with me because I made it so.