Beech Tree News Network

When I was growing up, we kids each had three pairs of shoes: a pair of every-day shoes, a pair of school shoes, and a pair of Sunday shoes.  Each day after school, we would change from our school shoes into our every-day shoes, which had actually begun their lives as school shoes, but had become too worn to wear that title and had subsequently been demoted to every-day shoes.
 There were strict rules that applied to shoes back in the day.  You might get by with wearing your school shoes for an hour or two after you got off the bus, but God help you if you didn’t change out of your Sunday shoes as soon as you arrived home from church.  It was the eleventh commandment in our house: Thou shalt not keep thine Sunday shoes on thine feet after Sunday service has concluded.
My husband, Garey, says his mom had a system by which shoes were designated every-day, school or Sunday.  When he or his sister, Charlotte, got a new pair of shoes, those automatically became their Sunday shoes.  The previous Sunday shoes would now become their school shoes, which in turn made their former school shoes now their every-day shoes.  There would have been a problem with that for my two younger sisters and me, because our Sunday shoes were always patent leather, and we would have broken our necks on the school yard if our previous Sunday shoes had to become our school shoes.  Shoes posed a real quandary back in the day.
My two younger sisters and I would get up on Sunday mornings, dig our black patent leathers out from under the bed, get a jar of Vaseline down from the medicine cabinet and go to shining our shoes.  We would each put a glob of Vaseline on a Kleenex and rub the glossy black surface until we could see our reflections.  Of course, on the way to the car, every errant piece of grass, cat hair and grasshopper wing within fifty yards stuck to that surface, but we would wipe the debris off on the floor mats and they’d be good as new.
One Easter, my sisters and I got white patent leather shoes with white purses and white hats to match.  The purses were made like small white parasols with drawstrings.  They looked like lace umbrellas.  I have a picture of the three of us on the couch wearing our navy blue dresses with white accessories.  Some moments become frozen in time.  I remember that day like it was yesterday, and I would give anything if I still had that parasol purse and white patent leather shoes. 
My granddaughter, Sabria, is two and already has a gazillion pairs of shoes.  She loves them and often lines them up in a row.  When my daughter takes Sabria out, she makes sure her dress and shoes match.  When I take Sabria out, I let her pick out her own shoes.  She usually wants to wear the Dora snow boots—the ones I got at consignment for two dollars—so off we go with Sabria in a sundress and Dora snow boots.  I take backup shoes, of course, just in case we go somewhere fancier than Walmart. 
Even though I like to think of myself as a hip grandparent, when it comes to Sunday shoes, I’m old school.  Sabria can cry and whine all she wants about wearing her new white sandals with the butterflies and sparkles to the garden, but I won’t allow it.  Sunday shoes do not belong in the garden!  I guess that’s my eleventh commandment.