Twenty Summers, One Pair of Sandals: A Story of Love, Loss, and Leather

Why a single pair of handmade sandals from a small Canadian shop became the most precious thing I own.

By Margaret Hughes

Longtime customer of By Charlottes
June 21, 2026 | 10:05 AM EST

The Sandals I Almost Did Not Buy

I still remember the day I first walked into By Charlottes, more than twenty years ago.

I was newly married, with very little money, and I had wandered in just to look. Then I saw them. A pair of soft beige leather sandals, sitting near the window, like they had been waiting for me.

They cost more than I could really afford back then. But the woman behind the counter smiled and said, "Those will walk every summer of your life with you, ma chère. It is not a cost. It is a companion."

I bought them. They are the best thing I have ever spent money on.

My Companion Through the Ordinary Days

For the first few years, those sandals just lived an ordinary life with me.

They came to the Saturday market every week. They walked the lake path on warm evenings. They waited by the back door all summer, ready for whatever the day held. They carried the small, forgettable moments that, looking back, were actually my whole life.

I bought other sandals over the years, of course. Cheap ones, trendy ones. The straps snapped, the soles wore through, they ended up in the bin within a season.

But the beige leather pair only grew softer and more beautiful with time. I have had them resoled twice. Like they were getting better at being mine.

They Held My Happiest Days

Those sandals were there for everything that mattered.

They were on my feet the summer we brought our daughter home, pacing the garden with her against my shoulder at sunrise. They came on every family holiday, every birthday picnic, every long August evening.

They became so much a part of me that my daughter, as a little girl, could find me at the beach just by looking for them beside the towels.

I never thought of them as just sandals. They were simply always there, holding the pieces of a happy life.

The Day Everything Changed

Then, four years ago, I lost my husband.

The world stopped making sense. I do not remember much about those first terrible weeks, except for small, strange details. And I remember that on my first morning walk alone, I reached for those sandals.

I do not even think I chose them. My hands just reached for the thing that had always been there, the way you reach for something steady when the ground gives way beneath you.

Later that week, I found the original shoebox on the closet shelf. Inside the lid, in his handwriting from twenty years ago, were five small words he had written the day I brought them home: "The pretty ones. Always, for you."

How They Carried Me Forward

In the long, grey months that followed, those sandals went everywhere with me, the way they always had.

Somehow, wearing them felt like carrying every good summer we had shared. They had been there for all of it, and now they were helping me carry the weight of his absence too.

I know how strange this must sound. That a pair of leather sandals could mean so much. But anyone who has held onto something through the hardest days of their life will understand.

It was never about the leather. It was about everything the leather had been there for.

The Story That Brought Me Back

A few weeks ago, I came across Charlotte's story online. The little atelier in Old Quebec. The train to Toronto. Antoine. I read it twice, sitting very still.

I do not know what came over me, but I had to go. I had to thank the woman who, without ever knowing it, had made the one thing that carried me through the best and worst days of my life.

So I drove across town, my old sandals on my feet, and walked back through that door for the first time in twenty years.

When She Saw the Sandals

Charlotte was older now, smaller, her hands a little slower. But her eyes were exactly the same.

I placed my sandals on the counter, and her face changed. She ran her fingers over the worn leather, turned one gently in her hands, and found the small stitched mark every pair she makes carries beneath the strap.

"I made these," she whispered. "A long time ago." Then she looked up at me with tears in her eyes, and I realized she understood everything I had come to say without my saying a single word.

We were two women who had both loved and lost. And we stood there holding the same pair of sandals, crying and laughing at once.

Why I Am Telling You This

Charlotte still works, side by side with her granddaughter, though her pace has slowed.

I am not writing this for her. I am writing it for you. Because somewhere on those shelves is a pair that could become for you what mine became for me. A companion. A keeper of your story. A witness to your whole life.

I bought a second pair that day, for my daughter. So that one day, when I am the one who is gone, she will still have something to reach for that was always there.

These sandals outlast the seasons. That is the whole point. Go and find the pair that is waiting for you.