Early in December of last year, something happened to my right foot. This is the foot that has always given me trouble. It’s the foot and leg that I had surgery on all the way back in 1987, surgery to correct a turned-in set of toes. Surgery that said to my whispering, wayward bones: here. This is how you do it. This is where you’re supposed to go.
My grandmother had bunions all her life. My mother has them too, as does my uncle, as do other family members. Some of us hurt because of these bunions that we have and others in our family do not. My grandmother, whenever she was asked about them, was gentle and adamant. They don’t hurt. Why bother doing anything to them if they don’t hurt?
My foot has hurt me for a long time, but long ago I reached a kind of peace with it. It hurt, my foot, but I wasn’t going to let it get in the way of doing life the way that I wanted to do it. I wasn’t going to let it stop me from running, or climbing up stairs (as much as I hated, and continue to hate, stairs of all kinds). For a span of time in my early twenties I held grief over the fact that I was never going to walk in stilettos, but I eventually learned to let that grief go because it seemed nonsensical, on some level, to hang on to it. Why bother grieving when the act of wearing shoes with even a hint of a heel brought me so much pain? It made no sense.
So I got used to my loafers and my sandals and then, when I finally had the economic capability, to only wearing shoes that would fit my orthotics. (The world has come a long way in shoe styling, thank goodness—there are a lot of nice options out in the world now.) When I looked at my crooked foot and wonky toes I only felt gratitude for what it has carried. My little foot that could.
Then, in December, something happened.
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