Sermon for Big Girl Shoes

Sometimes when I'm trying to get dressed to go out I have mental breakdowns.  I wish I could say that statement was hyperbolic, but I can't.  The first time I broke down I had just finished my 7th grade year and had to pick out a cocktail dress to wear to the Bat Mitzvah of a boy I secretly loved; the most recent time was last night, in my 36th year of life.

I have a little social anxiety, an anxiety exacerbated by certain situations: when I'm the oldest of the group, or the weirdest of the group, or the most liberal of the group, or the heaviest of the group, or the only woman without children of the group, etc.  Sometimes I cry in my closet while trying on skinny jeans or sundresses.  Sometimes I just go silent in the car on the way to wherever I'm expected.  Sometimes a lump forms in my throat when I'm asked to shake hands with a stranger.  I'm not the only woman for whom the modern world feels difficult in these ways.

I always make it through--I credit my parents for "toughening me up," and, more importantly, for teaching me I'm not the center of a room and, therefore, not exempt from social etiquette or manners.  I fake it until I make it much of the time.

Anyway, last night I was beside myself for whatever reason.  Part of the problem stemmed from my dog, Max, who in the last few weeks has chewed to bits two pairs of my summer shoes, so I don't have much to choose from.  Another part of the problem is the end of the semester.  I haven't worked out in weeks, and my school's cafeteria keeps offering fried foods I love and my students keep asking for their stupid grade point averages.  So I dug through some old plastic bins of shoes until I found a pair that worked.  Michael Kors.  On major discount at a second-hand store.  High heeled clogs with metal studs in the black leather bands that bridge my feet.  So, so sexy.

I bought those shoes 7 years ago.  One night while I was living in New York City and dating a model who I liked more than he liked me, I wore the shoes to a local concert and then out afterward.  The heels made me so wobbly that while throwing a dart at a target in the dimmest of dive bars in the East Village, I tripped and fell flat on my face in front of everyone, including the male model.  My cousin pulled me aside and asked if I had other shoes I could put on before I tried to bike the ten blocks home to my rental in Greenwich Village. Luckily, I had flip flops.  Classy.  I like to think plastic flip-flops were urban chic at the time, ironic objects of the underground fashion scene in the Big Apple, but in reality they were just what a clueless, blister-worn Texan might have in her oversize purse.  Ugh.

But something was different with those shoes last night.  It was like I had opened an old journal and read back my own wise words to myself years after I'd written them down.  The heels I once had trouble balancing in felt better on my feet. I walk more slowly now--I saunter more than flit--so I can step heel to toe, heel to toe, and still appear poised.  I've grown up.

Then this morning my dog tried to chew my "big girl" shoes too.  I screamed at him: No!  Stop!  Give me those!  Those shoes matter to me.  They are a symbol of something and the something is this: at 28 years old I bought a pair of shoes that I could envision some version of myself wearing although I wasn't ready to wear them yet.

There's something magical in the idea that we might foresee our own bright future and reach for it even when we're far, far away from deserving it or being prepared for it.  I was like my own fairy godmother buying myself a glass slipper I knew I'd fit into someday, somehow, but not that night, not that night.

And, on a metaphorical level, if you're going to wear big girl shoes, you best be prepared for big girl consequences.  That's true in my social life as well as my writing life.  I mean, I might fall flat on my face.  I often do.  The readers of my blog or my published writing might prefer I wear practical, reassuring Mary Janes in some shade of beige or gray or even a respectable red.  I should be a good Christian girl if I want to write about God.  I really should.  There's just this small snafu.  I want to show up with spurs or spikes.  I want to be something people have to rub up against, something that scratches their skin.  I want them to feel...alive, even if bothered.  But that means I have to be ready for push-back.  I might upset people.  I might be turned away for a dress code violation.  They might not like me.

I think of Kim Addonizio's red dress: "I'll wear it like bones or skin/It'll be the goddamn dress they bury me in." Or I think of Stephen Dunn: "Insufficient the merely decent man."  Or I think of Elie Weisel: "The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference.  We must always take sides."

I'm not here to make you comfortable, although the sweet, Southern girl in me would really like you to feel comfortable.  I wish iced tea and endearments could really heal the world.

They can't.  I can't always be nice and decent--not when God is the question at hand.  But I can walk down this street in a damn fine pair of high heeled shoes.

And I probably won't fall.

Amen.