The Shoe, Part 2

Once again, I've made a visit in to New York's Upper West Side to go to Harry's Shoes and exchange a pair of shoes and have a visit with Lauren, the very "nice saleswoman" mentioned in the earlier blog post. (Lauren helped me last year find the very sneaker that huddles next to the glamour shoe in one of the photos on the first post, The Shoe.) And with her help I have now found a both comfy and pretty Scandinavian clog that is sheer pleasure to wear and have obtained it in two colors, so here below is one color on each foot!)
And this reminds me of a very nice story from long ago:
When I was a freshman in high school, my grandmother had recently come to live with us in Merrick, Long Island, since my grandfather had died and she would have been alone in their house. And it is true that while I came to love her very much the older I got, she and I were not great buddies when I was young. She seemed often to disapprove of me (though only subtly expressed...like a tired sounding sigh after I would say something.) There was no way to confront this, and I certainly would not have have been rude enough to say, what does that mean, Nana?   Nana was what my sister and I called her...and now my granddaughter calls me Nya Nya (hence the title of my blog here.) So anyway, my high school involved both a longish walk and a bus from Merrick to Bellmore, and as I was getting dressed one morning, I tried on a couple of shoes...and it so happened that one was black suede and one was brown leather, and something must have distracted me because I ended up walking about a quarter mile to the bus stop still wearing the two different shoes. I was patiently waiting with the other kids for the bus and a girl tapped me on the shoulder and said: do you know you have two different shoes on?  I blushed with shame and wondered what to do, and thought gratefully of my gym locker where my sneakers were waiting. We had gym at my high school every day, sports were very important in that school, and actually that was probably very good for us all, though sometimes annoying, but certainly this was a saving grace. I rushed there and put the offending pair in the locker to take home later and spent the day in the sneakers (and I should mention to any who might not know this, that no-one wore sneakers during the day at school in those years.) So I got through the day and went home and my grandmother was there (my parents both still at work), and I told her of my embarrassment and the solution to the problem, and she loved it. I think it started to bring about a bit of a change between us. I still bridled at some things but gradually came to see her differently (and she me.) When I was a little girl, I loved dolls a lot, and during the WWII era, there weren't all the American Girl Doll clothing and accoutrements such as now, and one Christmas Nana crocheted some clothes for a small doll that I had. Whenever anyone had a baby, Nana crocheted little booties for the baby, blue or pink accordingly. When I got married, Nana was in her mid 80s. When married for several years but still no baby coming, Nana decided to crochet me a pair of booties. And she made one in pink yarn and one in blue. They were in a little Lord &Taylor pink metallic box, with tissue surrounding them, with a card that said: "I tried to cater to your unusual love of variety - particularly in footwear!" Nana died in 1970, and only after that came baby Liana, in 1972, and then baby Dari (Daria) in 1974. Nana would have loved knowing them. So here below are photos of  1. the booties, pink and blue,  2. Nana's note, and 3. the mismatched clogs.

Harry's is on Broadway, on the corner of 83rd Street, their website is:  www.Harrys-Shoes.com