When we were young, my Dad always wore wing-tipped shoes — brown or black. 

He had one pair of Keds sneakers and several pairs of tuxedo shoes.  Maybe he had another pair of shoes for the weekends, but this was the 1960s after all.  And a man of my father’s generation didn’t wear jeans until the late 1970s and sneakers — gasp — only when old-style shoes were too tough on his aging feet.  Dad and his wing-tips.  That’s what men of a certain age wore.

I remember the weekly walk from synagogue after Sunday school and Dad’s racing me the last block home.  He wore his wing-tips and I wore my Mary-Janes (which I hated).  Dad and his wing-tips.  That’s what men of a certain age wore.  Even when playing with their kids.

Dad and his wing-tips.  I used to try to walk in them after he had taken them off and put on slippers (another thing that people haven’t done since the 1970s).  They were so heavy and unforgiving.  I used to clomp around and fall and get up and keep trying. 

In the early 1990s, Italian designers started selling women’s wing-tipped shoes.  More refined than the clunky saddle shoes of the prior decades.  I have several pairs in black and brown, although I went for a simpler look:

For years, I didn’t wear them because I thought I looked too dyke-y in them.  Since Dad’s fall, I wear them again.

If I am going to be as good and kind to him as he was to us, I need to walk in his shoes.  The shoes he wore when he had all the answers.