BrandiBlog

I hate to wear shoes. About 95% of the time I’m barefoot. Living in Arizona for all of my life, this seems perfectly reasonable to me. I mean, where else can you sport flip flops all year round? If I need shoes to go out to the mailbox or take the trash out, I slip on a pair of rubbery flip flops and once the task is completed, aaaaah. Bare feet again.

The downside to my perpetual foot nakedness is the condition of my feet. Besides the obvious cracked heels and hoof-like skin on my soles, I have what my husband calls “grocery store feet.” We’ve all seen grocery store feet before. It’s basically the dirty, nasty feet of small children that you see dangling from the seat of shopping cart baskets. It’s feet with black grime between the toes and a thick layer of god-knows-what under each toenail. It’s feet with a dirt line across the joint of each little digit. It’s these wonderfully dirty feet of small children that proves that they’re mobile and getting all over the place. For babies, it’s a sign of independence.

Last night, before bathtime, I noticed my son’s grocery store feet. At less than 9 months old, he isn’t walking yet. But he sure as hell is trying. He has a little walker that he cruises all over the house in, chasing me from room to room. He tosses his head back, scrunches up his eyes and lets out a joyfilled laugh as he pushes across the tile on our living room floor. The world is his oyster when he’s in that walker. It enables him to pull everything off of the coffee table, get plastic wrap out of the trash can to chew on, and get into the coveted dog food bag to throw little nuggets of kibble all over our dining room. And as a result of his new mobility (and my less than stellar housekeeping skills), my son has glorious grocery store feet. They’re feet that tell a story. They are feet that say, “I’ve been places.”

So when my husband teases me about my own grocery store feet, I don’t mind it. I see the term as one of endearment. I love grocery store feet and all that they represent. It see them as a sign of exploration, experimentation and independence. I see my grocery store feet as something that tell a story of where I’ve been. And it makes me smile knowing that I, too, have been places.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 26th, 2007 at 3:05 pm and is filed under Life, Motherhood. You can follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your site.