There’s was an old woman who lived in a shoe, she had so many children…oh sorry, wrong story, today I need to concentrate on back to school shoes for everyone.

One of my pet peeves around here is kicking off one’s shoes and leaving them there; imagine the pile when there are twenty something kids living at home. I can’t hardly walk through the family room without hollering, “Git these dadgum shoes outta my way,” while the kids look at me like I’m over-reacting. (I’m not misspelling, I talk like that.)

I do buy everyone a nice, clean new pair of school shoes each year after I have my predictable meltdown involving bad grammar coming out of my big mouth, “ain’t no way any of y’all should even bother to try and convince me to buy those name-brand ghetto shoes,” as I remain stoically unconvinced that one’s identity should be tied up within one’s over-priced footwear. You don’t see me screaming for Manolo Blahniks, heck I even had to look up their correct spelling. I’m wearing a run-down pair of flip flops that one of my older boys discarded. My identity is connected to my college degrees and being my children’s mama, not to my shoes, or the lack of them.

The entire family prefers bare feet. This is Georgia after all, it’s hot, smells great outside and who wants to be bothered with shoes unless one is near those stinging fire ants?

Older adopted children don’t like change. They crave structure and routine which the school provides, they love their teachers, their friends and the fun that they have there but to get there, one has to leave the safety and security of Big Mama’s house, something they are all loathe to do as illustrated by several of my unemployed young men right now, all of whom I shooed out the door to hunt jobs. Notice I threw in the shoe terminology since that’s what’s on my pea brain today.

I took my darling 12 year old daughter today and found an inexpensive pair of Nikes that allowed the second pair to be half-priced at Rack Room. Slowly I’m getting it done, everyone will start school two weeks from today in new, very nice shoes that they’ll scuff all the way down the hill to wait on the bus with their usual out-of-control odd mixtures of anticipation, uneasiness and great memories of a lazy summer home with Mama, knowing Mama’s skipping out the back door, bare-feet and headed towards her garden for some peace and quiet.