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	teen voices

The Importance of Shoes: Doc Martens for a Wounded Heart
By: Judy Milne Hauser
Issue 108, September/October 2001

I'm 40-something and in the throws of puberty. That painful chain of bewildering moments that persecuted my youth and pummeled my psyche has returned in midlife. This week it rears its head in a pair of shoes.

Outside the kitchen window, frantic honks assemble like the horn section of a marching band. I grab my cup, scoot closer to the window, and see Canadian geese flying over in a formation as inherited as their webbed feet and the varicose veins my English grandmother willed to me. One lonely straggler tries to catch up, using urgent strokes and voicing a frenzy of squawks at his swifter comrades. I marvel at these feathered aviators, their precision, their determination to stay in unison. But the garbled honks seem to mock my attentiveness.

It's not happenstance that I think of my 14-year-old daughter and her new shoes. From Whitney's room come shrieks and grumbles about dirty laundry and nothing to wear. I take a gulp of coffee and resist the urge to search the hamper that most likely holds her sought-after garment. The week parallels most other weeks, with its ambush of difficulties.

Like any mother, I try my best to duck the difficult times and to savor the occasional delight, but it takes work. I've plowed through a thicket of books and articles about the emotions and hormones of adolescent girls--as if my memory of those days needed any nudging. I've cross-examined other mothers about what they do to ease the struggles their daughters face. But the difficulties keep coming, nearly every hour of every day. In the middle of one of these hours, I bought my daughter a pair of shoes. It seemed harmless. It seemed necessary. It was a strategic move of desperate parenting.

You see, Whitney is in a tug-of-war between unflinching independence and not knowing quite what to do. One minute she tells me to buzz off; the next, she hands over her withered spirit like an ambulance driver surrendering a corpse to the coroner. Yet buds of worry lines seem the only visible marks of any disorder inside her. The hall mirror, with its unfriendly glare on my own creased brow, demonstrates the long-term result of worry on a woman's face.

From this corner of motherhood, where my voice is muffled by the cheers and jeers of sudden strangers in my daughter's life, I want to collar the responsible parties--the media, her peers, the school system--for the impossible demands they put on her. Magazines instruct Whitney to be beautiful, to have unblemished skin, a perfect body, and razor-straight hair. Boys have convinced her, with their muted disregard, that she possesses few of these attributes. How can I tell her that what is beautiful at 14 is not important? After all, our standards for beauty may change, but they are a continuing presence in our world. And I still stand a moment too long in front of my own reflection, where I imagine a smaller nose, softer skin, a more delicate chin.

Coaches yell at Whitney to be nothing less than exact on the basketball court; when she is not, when she has a slump of heart, an inexactness of mind, or a tired body, she's pushed harder and told she can do better. "Buck up," I heard her coach say as blood dripped from her nose after she took an elbow in a game. No whistle was blown, no time-out called, until the blood ran down her face, continued down her chest, and threatened to stain the immaculate shine of the gymnasium floor. The blood was wiped first from the golden hardwood and only then from my daughter's face. Somewhere in this heap of unsolicited demands on her, teachers expect Whitney to achieve academically. So I bought her new shoes, for reasons I'm not proud of. At a time when Whitney is being groomed for precisioned living, her body is in unbridled upheaval. New hormones charge through her, changing her anatomy almost by the hour, never allowing her to feel too comfortable in her own skin. Whenever she abandons her self-control and tells the world to back off, well-meaning adults whisper, "It's probably hormones." The talk of compassion is there; the expectation that she "get over it" is much louder. But this balancing act of perfection and calamity did not alone warrant a purchase of new shoes.

Like the geese, Whitney labors to stay with the flock. Friends are crucial to her identity--they tell her what she thinks of herself. But at 14, friendships are as fickle as a spring day on the West Coast. Best friends hate each other one day and are trading clothes and secrets the next. The adolescent girl might have half a dozen good friends on Monday, and by Friday be deemed the school outcast. Moodiness is my daughter's most constant and dependable companion.

Aren't all these things just part of growing up, and shouldn't I just accept them?

I try. But being mother to a daughter has an entire circuitry of painful recognitions, of kindred woes and old tapes that were shelved as I watched my son make his way into adulthood. From a simple gesture of upturned eyes or a turned-down lip, I can discern from my daughter an entire day gone wrong. My ear is to the ground in a way it never was with my son. I anticipate all the possible bumps in the road ahead and want to steer her clear of them, if she'd let me. I want to find that shirt in the laundry and wash it and dry it and fold it neatly on her bed before the tears come. Yet as I hold onto her like the last days of life, Whitney loosens herself from my grasp.

The new shoes were not an urgency, not even a necessity; Whitney owns enough pairs of Nikes and Reebocks to shoe the NBA for a season. I bought the shoes not for her feet but for her heart, which broke about a month ago. It wasn't noticeable outright. There wasn't any bleeding or scabbing. She didn't cry or ask for a bandage. When I questioned her, she wouldn't admit that her heart was broken. But I could see it in her eyes, her blank, colorless eyes.

Who knows why her heart broke? Perhaps that small galaxy of pimples that scatters itself across her forehead had something to do with it. Maybe it was the drop in her history grade, or the lost friendship of her best friend. It might have been the missed shots in the big game against Washington. Perhaps all of the above came together in a conspiracy to gang up on her vulnerable and elusive self-esteem. So I broke down and bought her a pair of new shoes. "Doc Martins," she assured me, "are the most awesome shoes ever made."

Buying the most awesome shoes ever made was, I admit, an indulgence in the worst kind of parental whitewash. I gave in to that weak and limping rationale. I gave in to what most parents agree is the melting ice of self-esteem. I caved in to instant gratification, the quick fix. I bought the shoes so my daughter could simply look down at the leather marvels on her size-nine feet and remind herself that she is important. I bought her the name brand that would keep her feet warm, dry, and popular. Miraculously, although Doc Martins weigh twice as much as any of her other shoes, once in them, Whitney seemed to walk with a lighter step and a happier face than I'd seen in six weeks.

She had them for two and a half days. On day three, while my daughter played basketball, those $90 Doc Martins walked off with another girl out of the locker room.

This morning, I listen while Whitney struggles to find her way into another day. I think about the importance of shoes in a 14-year-old girl's life. I think about the young girl who now wears my daughter's shoes, who traded in her integrity for the status of wearing a name brand.

I push away from the window and try to fasten my mind to something less fretful. The geese are long gone. The kitchen is quiet again. The clamor from the room down the hall dies away. I turn to see my daughter standing before me. A backpack the size and weight of a sports utility vehicle hangs from her shoulders. A smile finds its way through blue and green braces. I look at Whitney long and hard. Through her braces and her smile I recognize something I haven't seen in awhile, something I've forgotten about in this latest assault of mishap and setbacks, something for which I've neglected to give her credit. Through the waves of hormones, out of the jumble of adolescence, she shows me her best feature. She shows me her beautiful and brave spirit with its own personal name brand that only Whitney can wear. She reveals her determination to be a survivor, her capacity to be tossed about on the high seas of a troubled world, and a magnificent will to land, once again, on her feet.

Judy Milne Hauser is a writer living in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, Mike, and their daughter, Whitney. When not writing, she is sailing, gardening, and watching her daughter play basketball. Whitney has been a source of other articles by her mother, including "A Roadside Memorial," previously published in Mothering.