Answer :
In "In my mom's shoes", the mother's shoes represent Chow's grief and her memories of her mother to her.
In the lines 'It's easy to remember her wearing these shoes — and not for yachting. They were as much a part of her look as her wry grin and the way she'd try to wink but instead only be able to blink both eyes. They were on her feet at the barn when she would take me to ride.' we can feel the narrator reminisce about the happy times spent with her mother.
The lines 'They're still impeccably soft, though. I can feel her imprint in them; my big toe aligns with hers, and the backs of my heels are cupped by the dents her own must have formed' again has the narrator comparing her feet to her mother and listing down the similarities.
The narrator remembers her mother and feels she is time-travelling in the lines ' I imagine all this perspiration and what's captured in it — bits of skin and lint, maybe — mingling with the remnants of my mom's, hers decades old' and imagines her skin and sweat mixing with her mother's like she was present with her. She feels qi, the Chinese energy circulating from her feet and into her shoes and that of her mother circulating back to her.
In the lines 'But later, in a fit of panic, I hear that a former roommate is moving out, and I worry they might launch a cleaning at my old house. I compose a text: Hey, have you seen this other shoe? And I attach a photo of the shoe, my hand wrapped around it like I'm holding a fish.'even though the narrator decides that the other shoe would have found a home of its own by now, she gets panicky and out of her grief and attachment for the shoes she sends a message to her roommates inquiring about it. She is overjoyed when one of her roommates sends her back the other shoe. She is utterly attached to the shoes and decides to wear them when her skin is dry and there is nothing to stain the shoes.
