When I was very young, I went with my mother to a boutique in Short Hills, New Jersey, where she purchased two or three dresses.  As I think back, there is one I thought of as special.  I can still picture her wearing it.  If I remember accurately, it was multicolored in soft blue and silver two-inch metallic squares, stitched together.  It was hemmed short, which was the style in the 1960s.  I don’t have a photo of it, nor did Mom keep the dress.  I used to refer to it as her Armor Dress.  Sleeveless and formfitting.  And stunning.

This may seem like an unimportant omission, but I can’t recall what shoes she would have worn with such a fabulous and sexy dress.  My mother didn’t wear high heels.

When I was about 5 years old, Mom suffered burns on the soles of her feet when walking on the sand of East Beach on Chappaquiddick.  Before we arrived, someone had built a fire for cooking in the spot where we set up our family picnic.  After they had extinguished the flames, the ignoramuses covered the embers with a thin layer of sand. When Mom crossed over the area of buried smolder, she burned her feet terribly.  It is one of the only times in my life that I saw my mother cry.  In this case, from physical pain.  I can still see my mother sitting between the ocean and dunes in her one-piece bathing suit, clutching her knees to her chest, as my father ran to the breaking tide to fill a child’s plastic bucket with cool, salt water, to bathe her wounds.

In the final days of August, we would return to our home in New Jersey. Mom still used her wooden crutches when walking.  I don’t remember how long she needed them, but it is another cinematic visual I recall clearly.

I don’t know or think that this horrific incident was the reason she didn’t wear high heels.  Her mother, my Grandma Reggie, wore what were named by the manufacturers, “space shoes.”  Her feet were in constant pain when wearing almost any kind of shoe, so I assume that Mom faced similar difficulties.  One may have nothing to do with the other, but I believe it was something passed down from mother to daughter.

I have photos of Mom wearing fashionable 1960s sun glasses and stylish blouses and tops. In one shot I have, she is wearing a white, mock turtleneck sweater with thin, black horizontal stripes where you can see the subtle outline of her pointed bra underneath.  That gave me no hint as to what kind of shoes she would wear when attending a function that required formal foot wear to go with silk stockings and knee-length taffeta.

I love seeing a woman in high heels.  I think it’s very sexy.  Of course, I don’t have to suffer wearing them.  Being gay (and not into dressing in drag), it may seem odd that I’d even write a piece about it.  But I have great appreciation for certain attributes I categorize as feminine. I have a friend, Jessica P., who says she’s casually comfortable in high heels.  Being one of the most honest persons I know, I believe her.  But a good deal of the women with whom I am friends hate walking in high heels because it hurts their feet after only a few moments.  Often, I have seen women arrive to an event in sneakers or comfortable flats, then change into trendy high heels right before they enter the threshold.

When I was a child, as I predictably grew, Mom would take me to buy new shoes. The salesman, Lou, would say to my mother that I picked shoes that fit my head, not my feet.  Why he cared or made any comment is beyond me, since he always got the sale.  Clearly, I did not adopt my mother’s need for comfort over fashion.  Even as a kid.

I like wearing high-top sneakers as well as pointed toe cowboy boots. As long as I’m wearing the correct size, I’m contented.  The one time I remember having to suffer uncomfortable footwear was when I was a teen and went to a serious hiking camp. I needed to break in the recommended boots, which meant putting bandages over my evolving blisters.

I don’t have a foot fetish.  In fact, I don’t sexualize feet at all.  Possibly because I think my feet are not attractive in any way, so I may unconsciously transfer that dislike of my own ugly inheritance to others.  I was naively surprised at how many people I know who have confessed to having a sexual compulsion for feet.  I know I shouldn’t judge.  Some of us are turned on by body parts that others don’t view in that way.  I’ll keep my attractions and fetishes to myself, thank you.

I saw my mother as being very beautiful.  I am the youngest of 4, born when Mom was 36.  Not able to pinpoint her exact age at the time, I believe my mother was in her late 40s when she bought the Armor Dress.  I recognize things like age are seen differently now, but back then, age 30 was publicly considered the beginning of “the decline” in beauty and sexuality for women.  As circumstantial evidence, there were birthday cards with inscribed messages saying things like, “Happy Birthday.  You’re 29…again!”  I don’t know where that insipid measure came from, considering how gorgeous certain actresses and iconic figures are, well into their forties, fifties and beyond.

My mother battled depression when she was in her late 50s.  I hadn’t known anything about it during its course, and she shielded me from finding out.  Her younger sister, Mimi, told me this many years after the fact.  Mom, coincidentally, confirmed that as the truth a week later. It seems her depression was severe enough that she considered committing herself.  I couldn’t believe I was so self-absorbed that I hadn’t seen it.  My arguably acceptable defense is that I was a teenager.  Which, in my case, meant almost everything was all about me.

Some of her depression may have been magnified by the onslaught of menopause, and some private disagreements she was having with my older sister (as well as some serious concern for me, after I admitted to battling debilitating teen distress while trying to survive my hours in high school).

As I have gotten older, I’ve developed some anxiety that I cannot attribute to any event other than aging.  My mother and my oldest brother suffered the same. And my mother’s mother, happily married and financially comfortable, displayed unexplored anxiety as well. I was quietly unforgiving with Grandma.  Now that it’s happening to me, I wish I had been more understanding.

When my mother passed, my sister and three nieces were offered any jewelry and accouterments that had not been given to them while Ma was still alive.  I took possession of my mother’s wedding rings. She had promised them to me long before she died.  Mom also had given me a pair of her earrings, opal studs, which I was able to wear, always one at a time, before she left us.  As for the wedding rings, I wanted something I would not remove at bedtime , once she was gone.  In the awkward aftermath, what was still unclaimed from her estate were a few formal “clutch” purses and some jewelry the women in our family didn’t want.  I took the purses and a selection of the jewelry and gave them to friends that were important to me.

Mom died on March 31, 2014.  On that day, I put her wedding rings on my right pinky, where they stayed.  Until yesterday.  I took them off because as I’ve gotten older, my fingers have expanded.  They were not easy to remove.  Ice and butter were needed to pull the rings over my knuckle.  I considered if (or when) I became hospitalized, I would not be able to remove the platinum and diamond spheres without their being cut off my hand.  The rings had become so tight, there is still an indentation where they had lived for eleven years.

I would like to get a thin, silver or white gold chain that I can wear underneath my shirt. I can drop her wedding bands onto those links.  Making a personal, sacred kind of armor. At least that’s how I will think of it.