Little Feet

Once upon a time, long, long ago in China young girls' feet were bound tightly. The four smaller toes would be broken and wrapped tightly in bandages. Periodically the bandages would be tightened to pull the arch of the foot towards the ankle. The perfect length of three inches would assure a woman the title of golden lotus.



As I stood before this display of shoes at a local art museum, I felt a wave of indescribable emotion engulf me. Those tiny shoes would barely fit a toddler. These were the shoes Fred had tried to describe to me. The shoes his mother wore. The shoes his aunt wore. The pain he witnessed as he watched these two women navigate life with deformed feet.

Now I understood his tenderness towards his mother...for her hard, hard life. His story came alive to me in this moment, as I gazed at the beautifully embroidered shoes.

A few days early I had held their family portrait. I had noticed immediately that his mother's feet were tiny compared to her daughters' feet in solid Mary Jane shoes--and they were not even ten years old yet.

His aunt lived at a mine site in the Sierra Nevada Mountain range. She spent her life tending the little cottage and garden in isolation. She seldom left. The walk to town was too far. She would send her son. And amidst all her duties, she would carefully stitch her own shoes and embroider beautiful designs.

The culture complexities aside, these tiny shoes are a tribute to two strong women I have the privilege to know through the boy they raised.