CathyMia.com

In my childhood, adolescence and early adulthood I was prone to almost endless disasters. Head-on collisions with bitumen and concrete, falls out of trees, horseriding injuries, attacks by neighbourhood dogs, bushwalking injuries, car accidents, swimming accidents, even a fall from a moving train. I came to believe that stitches not only belonged in fabric, they were a dynamic part of my face and head.

In time, my spine reacted to the multiple insults. Combined with the appalling level of nutrition I had experienced in a post-war working class family, I was headed for a crash. A small but significant accident in my late 20′s set the scene for the next 20 years of chronic, debilitating back pain which ultimately led to my being unable to walk unaided for a long period of time in my “middlescence”. Every few years I purchased a set of red shoes. The joy they brought to my heart and soul was immeasurable. Eventually they became “flatties” (no  heels). No matter how much pain there was, if I could wear red shoes I was Dorothy.  Somehow the red shoes always helped ease the pain. I felt pretty and powerful again.

One day my spine sort of collapsed and a genetic flaw revealed itself. I would have to wear build-ups on one side for the rest of my life. Not only no more red shoes, no more dainty, feminine shoes, not ever again. Instead, clumsy, ugly, loose shoes that could have a big chunk added to one heel. Life is ever unpredictable and sometimes the very things we want most are wrenched from us. It was a little thing I wanted but it broke my heart.

When I was 15 my mother bought me the first pair of high heels I ever owned. They were pointy toed, narrow, ridiculous red stilettos and I cramped my feet into them to go “down town” every chance I had. Down town was an old fashioned one mile walk and “into town” on the public transport system in post-war Sydney meant another hour or two on trains and buses, standing in the same cramped stilettos. I loved those shoes and the emotions they stirred in me of being a young woman, pretty, powerful and deadly in my impact. Over 40 years later I still vividly recall the pain and the glory of the red stilettos. It’s a little thing but red shoes always evoke in me powerful, vivid memories of foundation events that shaped my life.