On the morning my daughter Ella turned twelve, I gave her two presents. The first was a pair of shoes, which she had chosen herself and which she loved. The second was an empty jam jar with a dented lid. She turned it in her hands, politely confused, and asked me what it was for.
“It is the most valuable thing I own,” I told her. “And this book is the story of why.”
The left shoe went first. It was a brown school shoe, a size too big when Mama bought it so that it would last, and by the winter I was eleven the sole had opened at the front like a small mouth. When it rained, the water came in. When it was dry, little stones came in instead.
I learned to walk on the outside of my foot so that no one would see the hole, and I learned to sit with my feet tucked under the chair so that no one would see the way I walked.
