The Shoes

Dear Cameron,

As you grow (and my word, you are growing so fast and so awesomely), you have one element of life as a girl of which I am so proud and yet, it is so very tiring.

You, my girl, from your earliest days, have been and always will be, a shoe fetishist.

The good kind though, you do not demand the purchase of a million pairs of shoes all at once. The good kind is the type where you LIKE a pair of shoes, and will NOT let them go. Not for toffee or bribery or anything I can muster up to convince you that “no, those shoes are really done for now and you should really wear this pair”.

You, my Cameron, are stubborn. This is not your fault. It’s genetic. And when you LOVE something or someone, you LOVE them. Wholeheartedly, and without inhibition.

And so, when you LOVE your shoes, you really do LOVE them.

You see, Cameron. I’ve known this about you since birth. I knew you would be a shoe fetishist. I have an affinity for shoes, and I love my favourite pairs and yes, I wear them to death’s door and just cannot let them go. Just one look at Mommy’s “smartie slops”and you’ll know this to be true.

Your very first proper pair of ’shoes’, were a pair of Vans that Anne bought for you on your first birthday. Before then, it had been booties and little slip on guys that you loved in much the same way - those red and blue ones stick in my mind particularly. You loved those slip-ons.

So, then appeared the Vans. With the velcro and the cool skulls and whilst some parents of other children would look a little askew at the ’strange parents who let their one-year old wear shoes with skulls on’, we did not care. You loved those shoes, and we loved that you loved them and we all loved how divine they were and how much they embodied your definitive coolness.

You wore those Vans everyday. You loved them. Even on the days when I would have to wash them.. you’d wait for them to dry in the sunshine just so that you could slip them on again and feel cool again.

My babe, you’re the coolest kid, even in your socks. Don’t forget that.

Then you grew some more, and those Vans needed to ‘move on’. And we found what you term your “sky present shoes”. A little pair of camo slip-ons, with a buckle and thick sole. And you loved them from the moment I put them on your feet.

And every day since that you put them on.

But those ’sky present shoes’ wore thin quickly, and we spent months cajoling and going shopping for new shoes. Hells, it got to Winter and you refused. You said “I will wear them with socks!”.

And, you stubborn girl, you did.

And then we finally found - your pink dancing shoes.

With the velcro and now that you were bigger, you could put them on and take them off by yourself and you loved them. LOVED them.

But, you were nearing three, fast, and being the tomboy you are, they started to fall apart quickly.

So, I spent six weeks trying. Taking you shopping, showing you shoes, purchasing no less than three pairs of shoes that you took some kind of a liking to in the stores and bringing them home.

You wearing those new shoes, proudly.

And the moment we’d walk in the front door, you’d sit down, take those lovely new shoes off and demand your dancing shoes.

I got to the point once where I just sat and sobbed over it.

Your stubbornness was defeating even me - the most stubborn of all. I’d tried everything - rainbow shoes, shoes with laces, shoes with little heels, shoes that sang, shoes that were pink, shoes that were green, anything).

So, i gave in. I caved.

I phoned your dad whilst I was at work one day.

And asked him to try and take you out shopping and see if he could get you to fall in love with a pair of shoes, and keep them on for more than five minutes and somehow, SOME.HOW, we could eliminate the ’sky present shoes’ and the ‘dancing shoes’ from the equation. I was desperate at this point, determined to somehow get new shoes on your feet…

The next day, a Friday, you woke up and we had our morning cuddle and I began the ritual of trying to catch you into wearing clean clothes for school and get your shoes on, and your face clean. I try and make it fun, I promise. And really, I do, with “spiders” and Super Mommy Powers and flying whooshing noises and cuddles and promises of “yes, i’m sure you can have a pony one day, Cam-Cam, if you’ll just let me get your socks on”…

So that Friday, I looked at you, you looked at me, and I said what I say every day:

“Cam-Cam, what shoes do you want to wear today?”

(and I hope and pray, every day, that you’d ask for not-the-dancing-shoes or not-the-sky-present-shoes).

And you looked at me, laughed and said:

“Mommy, you know, I want my new rainbow shoes”.