Today I’m focusing on my feet.

Yep, those are my feet, all nice and comfy and warm in the Best Socks in the Universe. Everyone should own a pair of these pampering socks. It is pure bliss, wrapping my feet in these wonderful socks. (They’re made by Gold Toe Socks. I’ve been unable to find them on the internet or I’d link you up to ‘em. I bought mine at the Gold Toe Socks outlet store.)

I’ve never been particularly fond of my feet. I’ve certainly never thought of them as pretty feet. I often refer to them as duck feet. No, I don’t have webbed feet. But I do have wide feet. Buying shoes for my wide feet has always been something of a challenge. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t have grossly distorted wide feet. You won’t find my feet in Ripley’s Believe It or Not. They are, however, wide enough that buying pretty shoes that actually fit was never much of an option in my younger days. I would squeeze my duck feet into dress shoes and suffer the consequences (pain) for as long as I had to wear them. That made for some long days when I worked in a job that required me to wear a suit or equally professional looking outfits.

And now I’m old enough and wise enough to buy shoes for comfort and fit rather than looks. New Balance shoes are the best. They make them in wide sizes for those of us with duck feet.

These are my feet without the Best Socks in the Universe. My naked feet, in all their glory. Granted, this is a post-pedicure shot, but I wasn’t going to show them in all their frumpy, winter, calloused glory. I’m not quite ready for that yet.

I’m learning to like my feet, to truly appreciate them. They are, after all, carrying the weight of the world. Well, the weight of their world at any rate, which is me and whatever I might be carrying.

My feet are the beginning and ending of me (depending on which way you’re going). I bet my feet were a source of great delight before I could walk on them, providing hours of entertainment as I held them up in the air or tried to put them in my mouth. “This little piggy” must have been played on those toes hundreds of times. My feet have been tickled more times than I care to count. They’re not very ticklish feet, by the way. You have to know the secret to tickling my feet in order to get a good tickled reaction. No, I’m not revealing the secret. Dream on.

My feet bring me into direct contact with the earth, one step at a time. I love being barefoot. My feet were born to be naked, all exposure, all the time. My feet love me when they’re naked. I love my feet when they’re naked. I like the feel of cold tile, plush carpet, green grass, warm or cool sand, mud, dirt, and even concrete. When I was much, much younger I had feet tough enough to walk over any surface because I spent most of my summer days running around without shoes.

There was study from Rush Medical College, Chicago, published in the September 2006 issue of Arthritis and Rheumatism that suggests adults with osteoarthritis benefit by going barefoot. Findings “suggest that modern shoes may exacerbate the abnormal biomechanics of lower extremity OA,” and that “modern shoes, and perhaps our daily walking practices, may need to be reevaluated with regard to their effects on the prevalence and progression of OA.”

See? Even science agrees. Barefoot is best.

My feet take me places. I often wonder how many miles my feet have walked and hiked. In almost 50 years, they’ve gotten around the block, as they say, much more than once, that’s for sure. I walked over 700 miles last year and that’s just the mileage I kept track of during my walking workouts. Who knows how many more miles I walked doing things like shopping, cleaning house, visiting museums, walking around at work (where I was on my feet all day), meandering around the pond?
My feet balance me. They keep me grounded.

Now that I’ve taken the time to think about them, my feet are amazing.

I am grateful for my amazing feet, for all the miles they’ve walked, for all the places they’ve taken me, for all the standing around they’ve put up with, and for allowing me to stay in touch with Mother Earth.

Thank you, feet. Maybe you’re not terribly pretty feet, but you sure are beautiful.