“If you look closely at a tree you’ll notice its knots and dead branches, just like our bodies.  What we learn is that beauty and imperfection go together wonderfully.”

– Matthew Fox

I have two feet.  They serve me well.  Each morning when I wake up and throw my feet over the edge of the bed, I plant them on the floor and feel confident that they will get me where I need to go.  One of my feet was turned inward when I was born.  Some time spent in casts when I was an infant straightened it out and allowed it to fit inside of shoes — something for which I am grateful, even today.  Its straightness saw me through loafers and Mary Janes and even a few pairs of high heels in my younger years.  It carried me through cartwheels and handsprings and one of the fastest quarter-mile runs in gym class.  It pointed daintily during my years as a synchronized swimmer.  I think I probably grew up with a greater-than-average appreciation for my feet than most kids I knew.

I still have two feet.  I have used them well.  Now that I have passed sixty, it appears that my feet are beginning to complain about all the places I’ve made them walk.  They have carried me through five pregnancies, hiked over rocks, chased my children from birth to adulthood, and now walk briskly to keep up with my little grandchildren.  They have withstood long days of carrying my body upright through a busy life.  My feet speak to me these days; and what they are telling me is that it is time for me to return the favor and take care of them.

I don’t wear sandals any more.  It’s not that I would mind baring my feet to the world; it’s more that they — especially my special foot — need the support of orthotics that can only be contained inside oxfords or sneakers.  Just like the gnarled old trees that I love to stare at when I take my walks, my special foot has begun to twist and turn and contract.  It makes me wonder if there is something in its life cycle that desires a return to its original shape.  I sit in the evenings with toe-separators spreading and stretching and pulling it straight.  I work at keeping it shoe-worthy; and I wonder whether I asked too much of it through the years.

I think of the appeal of driftwood and the twists and turns of the tired old branches of ancient trees; and I look at my twisted old foot.  There is something beautiful in discovering that not all things useful need to be pleasing to the eye.  There is beauty in perfection and there is equal, but contrasting, beauty in the imperfections of our world.  The next time you see an old, gnarled tree with bare and twisted branches, consider the beauty in the storms that tree has weathered.  Look at the graceful way it has twisted and turned as it has withstood the winds and weathering of a life well-lived.

I have two feet.  They serve me well.  When I prop them up at the end of a busy day, it is the imperfect one that shows me all the places I have been and calls up the memories of all the things I have done with such facility throughout my life — carried by my imperfection to places that I can hardly believe I’ve visited.

We walk through life as perfectly as we are able.  Isn’t it ironic that it is our imperfection that calls forth the uniqueness that each of us knows as our own?