Alive and Kicking

Today I went shopping with my sister and my mom. My Niece is getting married this summer and my mom needed new shoes for both the shower and the wedding. We went to the outlet mall, not just to get a deal, but because they have an obscene number of shoe stores there, and my mother has a wide sole. We are tall, and being tall comes with big feet. Being a 10W is difficult, being a 10W and 67 years old............worse. Being with my mom today, I really started to get how hard it is as you get older. Shoes are either geriatric, or made for ladies of the night, and out of all of them only two pair come in wide. Shopping for bras, makes you want to start you own company to make bras for women who don't have fake breasts. The body changes as it gets older. Skin and fat change in consistency, feet hurt. We take her shopping pretty often, she can be fussy about clothes and we try our best to keep mom current looking. She always feels good by the end of the trip, but the experience itself is usually pretty grueling. We can roll our eyes and say "oh mom" but today in the dressing room with her, I saw for a minute just how unhappy she is about getting older. I hate to shop personally. Shoe store after shoe store she found nothing. People told her they could order it in her size and ship it to her, but when you have a wide sole you have to try the shoe on before you buy it, and no one wants to make the hour long trip to the mall to return the shoes if they hurt. From 10:30am until almost 2pm she tried shoes on, we started looking for her size, then went back to each store trying the next size up on. She couldn't really look around at shoes like everyone else and then look for her size. You look for the size first and then see if you like the shoe, so you don't set yourself up for constant disappointment. In the end she found a pair of shoes that I know she would not have settled for first thing. No shoes for the wedding yet. I honestly don't even know where else to take her. We always have Nordstrom, but if we don't have luck there, she may have to go barefoot. I also wear a 10W, the difference is, I'm only 34 and I'm still dumb enough to wear shoes that will make my feet bleed, after all it's only one night.
♪♫Alive and Kicking♪ ♫