It was never my mom. It was the slipper: built for a catalog photo, not for a woman of 80. "My mother has trouble walking and needed some shoes easy to walk in," one daughter wrote on our survey. Another one, before ordering, just wrote: "my Mom. Slipping."

These are a low knit house shoe with a thin rubber sole that grips her floor. One review: "Bought some for my mom and she absolutely loves them. Just bought another pair for her." In January, you get the second email.

My mom does not bend like she used to, and nobody is there at 6 in the morning to help with a slipper back. The fall risk at home is not the walk. It is standing on one foot trying to get a slipper on.

These go on like a sock. She steps in, standing up, one hand on the nightstand, no laces, no back to pull. She has not grabbed the counter since. Mom feels confident at home instead of careful.

A gift she uses every morning beats a gift she thanks you for and puts in a drawer. "My Mom will need these in her nursing home!" one daughter wrote. In that building everything is a polished floor and the aides have 20 other people to dress.

They look like shoes, and they go on like socks. She wore them to the dining room the day I brought them. The aide asked me where I got them. Mom said, my daughter, like she had won something. She looks like herself again, not like a patient.

Plush slippers cannot be washed, so by February they are not something you want to look at. These go in the machine with her laundry and come out like new, which in a building with a laundry room matters more than you think.

They are light, they fold flat for a bag, and the knit breathes. One woman ordered for "me, my daughter and my daughter in law when she visits." Another one "for my 99 year-old Mama!!!" I buy them in her usual size and they fit.

2 pairs, 2 colors: one for her and one for you, or one for her bedroom and one by her back door. "Comfy feet for in-laws," one woman wrote on her Christmas list. Every order comes with easy returns, no questions asked, so a wrong size is a swap, not a problem.

One review: "Gave them as a gift and they were a smash hit! Stylish and functional! I doubled back and got myself a pair!" When I ordered my mom's, the gray was already low in her size. If your mom is getting a slipper this year, make it one she will still be wearing in March.