A letter from a reader

At 63, I had finished every nice outfit with the same white walking sneakers for eight falls, because the pretty boots never made it past the first block

The longest thing I have written in years is a thank-you note for a pound cake, and it took me three drafts and most of an evening. I am not a writer, and it has never once been my place to tell another woman what she ought to put on.

But three different women asked me about my boots on a walking tour up in Northeast Texas last Saturday, and I have explained it enough times since that it seemed easier to write it all down properly.

My friend Carol grew up in Clarksville, and every October she talks me into driving up with her for the fall historic homes tour. You walk the whole old part of town on foot, house to house, a dozen big Victorians with their parlors opened up, on brick sidewalks that the oak roots have been heaving up for a hundred years. Last year, the week after, Carol had her photos printed and spread them out on my kitchen table. There I was on the porch steps of the prettiest house on the tour, in my good wool skirt and my nice cardigan and my pearl earrings, and on my feet, the same big white walking sneakers I wear to the grocery store. Carol tapped the picture and said it.

Peggy, you dressed for church from the ankles up.

I laughed, but she was right, and I knew exactly how it had happened. I own two pairs of pretty boots. Every fall I start the day in one of them, and every fall I am back at the car by the second block, changing into the sneakers I keep behind the seat. So for eight falls, everything I have worn has ended in the same white shoes.

I did not choose that, not really. Nobody decides to stop caring what is on her feet. It happens one sore afternoon at a time, until a friend holds up a photograph.

How it happens

When I was younger, I walked all over town in whatever I had on. Shoes were shoes, and I never gave them a second thought.

What changed was not my feet. It was the shoes on offer.

Go and look. On one side of the store, the boots with any style to them, narrow and stiff with a heel you balance on rather than stand on. On the other side, the walking shoes, sensible and cushioned and made to look exactly like what they are. Pretty or walkable. Pick one.

So you pick walkable, because you have somewhere to be, and you tell yourself nobody looks at your feet. Nobody says anything. That is the trouble.

What I had wrong

Here is the part I got most wrong, and I suspect a lot of us have.

I thought it was boots themselves that I could not walk in anymore. That a boot could look nice or get me through an afternoon, and never both.

It turns out the boot was never the problem.

It was the heel and the sole. A narrow heel and a thin, hard sole will have you limping back to the car on any boot, however lovely. A low, wide heel you can actually stand on, and a cushioned sole that grips, and the same boot will walk a whole town. It took me until 63 to work that out.

The boots are called the Quinn

They are from Iris and Nora, a small boutique here in Austin that has been quietly dressing women like us for a few years now.

The boots are called the Quinn. A soft, dusty purple mid-calf boot with a chunky knit cuff that comes up out of the top like the top of a warm sock. There is a little studded patch at the top corner, a thin lace that wraps around the back of the boot and ties with beaded ends, soft gathers across the front of the foot, and a low block heel. They come in blue, khaki, gray and black as well.

The heel is low and wide, so you are standing on it, not balancing on it. The sole is cushioned and it grips. They zip up the inside, so you never touch the lacing at the back, it is just there to be pretty. And that knit cuff keeps the wind off your ankles, and it turns a plain pair of jeans tucked into it into something that looks like you meant it.

Nothing complicated about any of it. Just a pretty boot that somebody bothered to make walkable.

What happened on the homes tour

This year the first cold front came through Clarksville the night before the tour. The morning was gray and cool, the oaks were dropping leaves all over the brick sidewalks, and Carol and I joined the ten o’clock group at the first house.

I wore the Quinns, with jeans tucked in and my nice cardigan. A woman on the porch steps behind me at the second house asked me about them before we were even inside. The young docent in the parlor at the third house asked the second time. And then there was Bobbie Jean, who has led that tour group for twelve falls and has never once said anything to me except to hurry up.

She waited for me on the front steps of the fourth house, looked down at my feet, and said, Peggy, that is the first year you have not been at the back of my group. Coming from Bobbie Jean, that is a medal.

What I noticed more than the asking, though, was that I forgot about my feet altogether. We did all twelve houses, up porch steps and down garden paths and over every heaved-up brick in that old town, and stopped at the church halfway for pie and coffee at the long table in the fellowship hall, and I never once thought about the sneakers behind the car seat.

The next morning I put them straight back on for church, and felt completely myself in them. That is the rarest sort of boot. The one you can walk a whole town in on a Saturday and wear to church on Sunday, and feel right both days.

Three things I have learned since

One. A low heel is still a heel. It lifts you just enough to look put together, and it is wide enough that you forget it is there. I had not realized how much I had missed that.

Two. The cuff does more than you would think. Tuck your jeans into it and the whole outfit looks finished, and on a gray morning with the wind coming down the street, your ankles stay warm.

Three. Order your usual size. They come from a US 4.5 up to an 11, and they are made to suit narrow and wider feet alike. I wear an 8 in nearly everything, and the 8 was right.

About the price

I want to be straightforward about this, because it was the thing that made me suspicious.

The Quinn is $55.95. It was $112.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that there had to be a catch, because each of those two pretty pairs of boots in my closet cost me more than that, and neither of them has ever made it past the second block.

There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is no department store taking a cut in the middle, and they have a sale on right now while the fall stock comes in.

I did what I imagine you are doing now and went and read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars. Not the suspiciously perfect five you see on some websites, which if I am honest made me trust it more. One woman from Honey Grove had written, “I wore them all day at my grandson’s wedding, on grass and gravel and the dance floor, and nobody believed me when I said they were the comfortable pair.”

Then I ordered the gray ones as well, for Carol, because it was her idea in the first place.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were out on my porch with two cups of coffee and the first cool morning of the year coming up off the grass, this is what I would say.

If you have quietly decided that the pretty shoes are for sitting down and the sneakers are for living, then it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and look.

A pair of boots is not going to change your life, and I would never tell you it would. But there is something about walking a whole town in shoes you actually like, and liking every photograph somebody takes of you that day, that I had given up on, and I would rather you did not give up on it too.

Two practical things. The sale is on right now, and the middle sizes are the ones that go first, which I found out because the 8 in gray was gone by the time I went back for Carol’s and I had to wait for it. And the first cold fronts are already lining up, and once this stock is gone, it is gone.

The white sneakers are back where they belong. Behind the car seat, for the grocery store.

Peggy