A Christmas Present

Back when we were college seniors, Steffi had a pair of low-heeled navy pumps with bows that were her mainstay dress shoes. After a couple of years she also wore them to work and really wore them hard and they became VERY loose. She stopped wearing them regularly after a particularly memorable Christmas Eve.

We were visiting her parents and she wore these shoes to church on Christmas Eve and then to a midnight tea with some friends of her parents . This surprised me because I knew she had bought a new, conservative pair of pumps for this visit to avoid criticism from her mother, but she forgot to pack them. Now you have to understand, as I just recently learned, that Stef and her mother had a running feud about the style and condition of her shoes. In fact, her passion for low-cut, loose, and often well-worn shoes and for shoeplay was an inside joke in her family, as well as being one of the things that initially attracted me to her. One time her aunt and I went to pick up Stef and her grandmother at a shopping mall. I was having trouble finding them, when her aunt said, Oh, there they are. You can tell it's Stephanie she's always playing with her shoe.

Well, on this holiday evening Stef was struggling really hard to keep her pumps from slipping so she could avoid her mother s wrath. But as the saying goes, man plans and God laughs. As we were going to church it started snowing. By the time we came out, several inches of sticky wet snow had accumulated, but her parents still decided to stop by their friends house for some quick punch and cookies. Without any boots, Stef s pumps were soon completely soaked, and she used this as an excuse for non-stop dipping and dangling at the party. When we left just before midnight, about six inches had accumulated and it was still snowing hard. We were walking carefully because the sidewalks were slippery, when suddenly the snow just sucked those loose pumps right off her feet. She put them on and tried again, but after a few steps the same thing happened. Of course her feet were now thoroughly soaked as well, so she took off the pumps and walked in her stockinged feet back to the car. When we got home, she placed the shoes in the heater room to dry. By Christmas day, they were dry but stiff and even harder for her to keep on. I didn t hear any criticism from her mother, but I remember sister Tracey teasing Stef a lot. Of course the two of them got into a fight because Tracey had her own shoe problems.

Stef wore those shoes again for a couple of years, but that soaking spelled their doom. Soon after that Christmas Eve, the side of the right shoe started to tear away from the very thin sole, and eventually the other one split down the side near the instep. Now it s just a memory.