My Granddaughter Bought Me Sandals for My 63rd Birthday. I Expected "Comfortable." I Got "Anti-Granny."
A note from a 63-year-old reader who almost cried at her birthday lunch - and the unexpected gift from a 35-year-old that changed how she thinks about getting older.
For my 63rd birthday, my granddaughter Sophia gave me a shoebox wrapped in brown paper, tied with twine, with a little card that said: "Grandma. I love you. But we are NOT doing the orthopedic Birkenstocks this summer."
She is 35. She works in fashion in New York. She is the kind of person who refers to everything as "iconic" and means it. And for the last three birthdays she has watched me unwrap something practical - a kettle, a heated blanket, a pair of compression socks - and try to look grateful.
I opened the box on the porch with my sister, who is sixty-five and was already laughing before I had the lid off. Inside was a pair of sandals. Black leather. Open toe. A small decorative gold detail at the front. A low block heel that sat on a real arch. The kind of shoe you would expect to see on a woman thirty years younger than me - and that, I would later learn, was entirely the point.
"Grandma. They're Anti-Granny."
That was the message Sophia texted me the night before the birthday lunch. I had asked her what she had gotten me. I was bracing for the usual disappointment of a thoughtful but practical gift.
No more medical-equipment shoes.
You're 63, not 93. 💅
I had to ask my sister what "anti-granny" meant. She looked at me over her glasses and said: "It means they look like something you'd actually want to wear, Jess. Not something the podiatrist prescribed."
And that, somehow, hit something in me I had not realized was there.
The Sandals Are Called the Faiith
Sophia had ordered them from a small coastal label called Claire & June Malibu - a place I had never heard of, which makes orthopedic sandals that do not look orthopedic. Real leather. Hidden arch support. A block heel low enough to walk in. A cut elegant enough for dinner.
The hidden orthopedic footbed is the part Sophia kept emphasizing on the phone. "Grandma, they're built like Vionic, but they don't look like a nurse's shoe. You can wear them with your linen pants. You can wear them with a dress. You can wear them and look like the woman you actually are."
Vionic charges $130. Orthofeet charges $179. The Faiith, Sophia told me, she got on sale for $55.95. I made her show me the receipt because I did not believe her.
What Happened at the Birthday Lunch
I wore them to lunch the next day with my sister and three girlfriends - all of us between 58 and 67. I was halfway through my salad when the woman two tables over leaned across and said, "Excuse me. Where did you get those sandals?"
She was 41. She had on linen pants and a silk top. She did not look like someone who would compliment a 63-year-old's footwear out of politeness.
By the end of lunch, two of my friends had photographed the sandals to show their husbands. One had already pulled out her phone and was on the Claire & June Malibu website ordering a pair in khaki.
That night I called Sophia. I told her what had happened. She did the loud kind of laugh that 35-year-olds do when they are right and an older person has finally caught up.
"I told you Grandma. Anti-granny. You're welcome."
What I Have Learned, Three Weeks Later
I have worn the Faiith almost every day since. Three things have stayed with me, and I have written them down because they are the kind of thing you forget when you stop paying attention.
1. My feet do not hurt at three in the afternoon. The hidden footbed is a real thing - not foam, not a marketing word. After ten years of plantar fasciitis quietly dictating what I put on my feet, I had forgotten what it felt like to walk out of the grocery store without limping the last twenty steps.
2. Younger women stop me. Not older women - although they do too. The compliments come from women in their thirties and forties, which is the part I keep telling Sophia about and she keeps laughing at me.
3. I look like myself. Not "myself for my age." Not "myself, comfortable edition." Just - myself. Which is, I have learned this summer, the part you do not want to give up.
About the Price
I want to talk briefly about the price, because it was the part of Sophia's gift that I assumed had to be wrong. $55.95 for a real leather sandal with a hidden orthopedic footbed sounded suspicious.
I sat down at my kitchen table and wrote out what I had paid, or seen, for similar sandals in the last five years:
- Faiith, $55.95 $140.00
- Vionic, $130
- Orthofeet, $179
- Birkenstock (Arizona, leather), $200+
I emailed the boutique. I figured if it was a scam, the email would bounce. The reply came the next morning from Claire herself.
"We're quietly small. We'd rather the sandals go to women who will actually wear them than sit in a back room. The next time you'll see this price is next May - if we're lucky."
What I'd Tell You If We Were Friends
If you and I were sitting on my front porch right now with a glass of iced tea, this is what I would say.
Somewhere around fifty-five, I started accepting that "comfortable" and "pretty" were two different sandal aisles. I had quietly stopped trying. The Birkenstocks lived in the front of the closet. The dressy sandals lived in a box on the top shelf, waiting for the rare occasion that I would put up with the pain for an afternoon.
My granddaughter, who is 35 and possibly knows me better than I know myself, refused to let me keep doing that. She did not buy me a comfortable shoe. She bought me a beautiful shoe that happens to also be comfortable. There is a difference. The difference matters when you are 63 and the world has spent ten years quietly telling you to pick.
I would tell you that I have worn the Faiith five times in two weeks. That my niece, who is 44, has already ordered a pair for herself. That my sister at sixty-five has stopped wearing anything else. That the beach season sale is the lowest the price goes all year, and the popular colors are already thin in the larger sizes.
I would tell you that the woman you are at 63 deserves a sandal that looks like her, not a sandal that looks like she gave up.
While the sizes are still in stock.
- Jessica
- Genuine leather upper, hand-finished detailing
- Hidden orthopedic footbed - relieves foot & knee pain
- Anti-slip block heel - designed for all-day wear
- Free U.S. shipping
About the writer. Jessica Bennett is 63, a freelance editor and grandmother of three based in Charleston, South Carolina. Her granddaughter Sophia is 35, works in fashion in New York, and is "an unfortunate authority on what I should and should not be wearing."
This is a personal account from a customer of Claire & June Malibu. Jessica was not paid to write it. She did receive the sandals she ordered (or rather, that Sophia ordered for her).