her left foot

Yesterday, I cut and filed her fingernails and soaked her feet so that I could cut her toenails. It’s true, you know, that both finger and toenails get thicker and harder as you get older. There really is nothing physical that gets better with age.
I’m looking at her left foot — big bunion, hammertoe, mangled other toe. Funny, but her right foot is not that bad. I think, like me, her left foot is wider than her right. Unlike me, she always bought shoes to fit the narrower foot instead of the other way around.
My mother once had racks of expensive pumps — pointed toes, high heels. I remember, back in the 50s, when I just couldn’t wait to wear a pair of shoes with heels, I would try on my mother’s pumps. Eventually, we wore the same size, at least in length, and that was when I realized that the only way pumps would not slip off the heels of my feet was if they were tight across the toes. Apparently, the same held true for my mother, but that didn’t stop her from buying those Ferragamos.
So now I spend hours online trying to find her shoes that do not hurt her left foot. I think I found a pair that might work, and I’m ordering two pair in two different widths. We just might have to buy both pair, the wide for her right foot and the double wide for her left foot.
I wonder if there’s anyone out there who has the opposite problem, ’cause we will have a right shoe that’s size 8.5 double wide and a left shoe that’s 8.5 wide.

3 thoughts on “her left foot

  1. Sigh. Wrong size. But my right foot is bigger, perhaps (for some reason?) because I’m left handed? Maybe the non-dominant foot is larger?

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