Episode III - The Shoe Fairy Strikes Back

Lest the Galactic lawyers strike back: All proprietary materials are properties of their respective owners.  “Sandosenang Sapatos” is property of Dr. Luis Gatmaitan. Images from the play are property of Tanghalang Pilipino. “Star Wars” is property of LucasFilm and Disney. Used for satirical purposes only. Now, on with the story.

Yearly on the eve of her birthday, wheelchair-bound Susie dreams of the Shoe Fairy who gifts her with a pair of feet and a pair of shoes that allow her to dance for one whole night. She thinks that her dying father can only truly love her if she fulfills his wish of having a ballerina for a daughter.

 

“You will go to the Dagobah system. There you will learn from Yoda, the Jedi Master who instructed me.”

Susie goes to Dagobah dreamland on the night before her father’s birthday to demand the Shoe Fairy to break their yearly pattern and allow her to have a pair of feet and a pair of shoes in the waking world. Unfortunately, the Shoes in her dream maintain that she can only talk to the Shoe Fairy on the night before her own birthday. Forced to leave her dream, Susie wakes up and gives her father a music box with a dancing ballerina.
 

  “Why wish you to become Jedi ballerina?”

 “Mostly because of my father, I guess.”

 “Oh. Your father. Powerful  Jedi was he. Hmm. Powerful Jedi.”

Unable to fulfill her father’s wish' Susie goes back to dreamland, only to be thrown out once more by the Shoes who believe that she should take care of her dying father instead of transforming herself into a ballerina. As Susie’s disappointment with herself transforms to anger, her belief that her father could not fully love her because of her disability intensifies.
 

“There is much anger in her.”

 

After Susie’s father dies, she finds herself in dreamland, on the night before her twelfth birthday. Finally, the Shoe Fairy shows herself to Susie.

“Looking? Found someone you have, I would say.”

This time around, not only does Susie refuse to talk to the Shoe Fairy, she also refuses to accept the Fairy’s expected gift of a pair of shoes. The Shoe Fairy reveals that the pairs of shoes she’s been giving to Susie do not really do not really some from her. Susie’s father appears bearing a pair of shoes.

“Susie, I am your father.”

He gives the pair to Susie and admits that he’s been the one giving Susie her pairs of shoes through the Shoe Fairy. With the pair of feet the Shoe fairy annually gives her, Susie wears the pair of shoes from her father and for the first time, she is able to dance with him.

When Susie wakes up on the day of her twelfth birthday, she happily tells her mother and her older sister about her father’s visit in her dream. Her mother and her sister tell her that her father’s love for her is so huge that no even death can take it away.

"Through the Force, things you will see. Other places. The future... the past. Old friends long gone."

They start preparing for Susie’s birthday celebration by cleaning the house. As they are cleaning Susie’s father’s little shoe shop, they discover a huge box containing twelve pairs of shoes. The pairs of shoes are of different sizes and each pair comes with a short letter. Each letter is Susie’s father’s letter for her, each one expressing his love.

"You must feel the Force around you. Here, between you... me... the tree... the rock... everywhere! Yes, even between this land and that ship!"

According to the letters, each pair of shoes carry his father’s hope that though Susie is missing a pair of feet, she’ll still be able to walk and even dance through life as a complete person without bitterness for her love will be as huge as her father’s love for her.

“May the Force be with you…always.”