A letter from a reader

At 63, I had started choosing my errands by how close I could park

I want to describe a habit I had for about four years, because I suspect some of you have it too and have never said it out loud. I would circle the parking lot twice for the spot nearest the door. I would skip the far end of the store if what I needed was not urgent. And I stopped going to the farmers market altogether, not because I did not like it, but because it is a long walk from wherever you manage to park, and my feet had opinions about that. I am 63, I am not a writer, and I did not think of any of this as a problem. I thought of it as being sensible.

Then three different women asked me about my shoes at that same farmers market on Saturday, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it down properly.

Here is how the parking habit starts. The shoes I could actually walk any distance in were sneakers, and I did not want to walk into a restaurant at sixty-three looking like I was on my way to the gym. The shoes I liked the look of were heavier than they needed to be, and by the second stop of the morning I was calculating how far the car was. So I split the difference the only way I could. I wore the shoes I liked, and I made the walks shorter.

Shoes I could walk in that looked like the gym, or shoes I liked that made me plan my parking. For four years I planned my parking.

Nobody decides to live like that. It happens quietly, one far parking spot at a time, until the shoe rack is drawing the map of your day and you are calling it common sense.

Then Linda walked the whole market in a pair

Linda lives three doors down and walks everywhere, which I had always put down to her being younger than me, and she is, by about a year. In June she came round in a pair of soft grey knit slip-ons shaped like a loafer, and when I said they looked comfortable she took one off and handed it to me. It weighed nothing. There was a mesh over the toe you could see daylight through, and a little tab at the heel to pull it on by. She said, this is why I walk everywhere.

They are called the Adele, from Iris & Nora, a small boutique here in Austin that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. I ordered the grey that evening, fully expecting to send them back.

They did not go back. The parking has changed instead.

What happened at the farmers market

I wore them on Saturday with cropped jeans and a white shirt, and I parked where there was a space, which was a long way off, and walked the whole market twice.

Three different women asked me where they were from between the peaches and the coffee stand. And Sue, who has known me twenty years and does not hand out compliments, said I looked like I had somewhere to be that was not a doctor’s office. From Sue, that is a bouquet.

Here is why they work, as far as I can tell. They weigh almost nothing, which after four years of heavier shoes felt like taking a bag off my shoulder. The knit stretches to the shape of your foot rather than arguing with it, and the toe is squared off with room in it. The mesh over the toe lets air through, which in a Texas August is not a small thing. There is a soft cushioned feel underfoot. And they slip straight on by the little heel tab, no laces, no bending. Somehow all of that adds up to a shoe that looks like a loafer and feels like a sock.

I have since walked to the store, walked to church, and walked round the block after supper three nights running, which Frank has noticed and not commented on. The heavier shoes are still on the rack. They have not been out.

Three things I have learned since

One. Weight is the whole trick. Nearly every shoe I owned was heavier than it needed to be, and I had been paying for that by the second stop of every morning. Take the weight away and the walk stops being a calculation.

Two. A knit shoe can look like a proper shoe. The loafer shape, the seam across the instep, the squared toe. It reads as something chosen for a lunch, not something issued for a walk.

Three. Ten colours and honest sizes. The grey I own, a beige, a black, a khaki, and some braver ones, from a 4.5 to an 11 with the half sizes in between, which for feet like mine is the difference between fitting and nearly fitting. I went back for the beige. Linda has three.

About the price

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

The Adele is $35.95. It was $72.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that there had to be a catch, because a shoe this light that you can walk a market in twice is usually priced like a running shoe.

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 this is their final summer sale as they close this chapter of the shop.

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 rather more. One woman had written, “Light as a slipper and I walked three miles in them the first day. They look like real shoes, which is why I bought them.” That was the one that decided it for me.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sitting on the porch with an iced tea and you asked me, this is what I would say.

If you have started planning your day around where you can park, you are not getting old. You are wearing shoes that are heavier than they need to be, and you have quietly rearranged your life around them. This is the shoe that takes the weight off, and it looks like something you meant to put on.

Two practical things. The sale is on now, and the grey goes first. And once this stock is gone, it is gone.

I parked at the far end on purpose this morning.

Peggy