When you are a stay-at-home mother, certain weeks of the year bring home with extra poignancy both your intense proximity to the quotidian things and your echoing distance from the grander scheme.
I am thinking, naturally, of the fact that the political conventions take place over the very same two weeks that we are all getting our children fitted with new shoes and notebooks and slotted back into school.
Only a short flight away, where half of Washington has decamped, all sorts of cool things are happening. Delegates are waving signs, party operatives are threatening each other and rumors are winging. Everyone’s feet hurt from standing or milling or striding around all day in an effort to be important.
Here, nothing cool is happening; but our feet are sore, too. We are waiting for our turn at the shoe shop, and there are three people ahead of us.
No matter where we go, there are too few salespeople for too many children, all of whom need something fancier than flip-flops for the first day of school, which is as soon as a few days ago.
“Ow. They’re too tight in the toes,” a boy gripes, limping around the salesman who is crouched at his feet. Looking at the man, the boy’s mother says hopefully, “They’ll loosen up with wear, right?”
“Correct,” replies the salesman. It is evident that he has said this many times. At this point, the man is not so much tired or trying to keep his temper as he is already visibly located in a Happy Place, beyond suffering.
“You’ve been wearing Crocs all summer, big guy, so switching to any hard shoe is going to take a little time,” the salesman says, gazing downward. This allows him to avoid the avid glances of a clutch of mothers hoping it’ll be their turn next.
Children meanwhile seethe or caper about the place according to their temperaments. Three of mine are rummaging through a basket of sparkling slippers.
Someone else’s daughter is wedging herself into tiny glittery sandals. A toddler is yanking down handfuls of argyle socks and laughing.
Our eleven-year-old sits above the fray with his eyes closed. Even when very young, he exhibited that particular masculine perplexity at the palaver required to do a bit of shopping, and it hasn’t gone away.
“We know what we need,” he murmurs. “Why can’t we just get the shoes and go?” I check my watch. We’ve been waiting nearly an hour.
“They don’t feel right,” says a nearby girl, meanwhile. She wiggles her feet in a pair of black patents with those strange clunky heels that manufacturers persist in putting on footwear for the preteen set. “They look weird.”
“They look great!” enthuses her mother, darting a look at the waiting hordes. There’s a note of pleading in her voice: “And they only need to fit through the holidays.”
Looking around, I’m surprised to be suddenly swept by a feeling of tenderness for the whole shambolic enterprise. Everyone’s feet hurt, half the day is gone, and the children are getting rebellious.
Yet how fragile and precious it all is! Yes, it’s unglamorous, tedious, and fatiguing to spend the afternoon getting children fitted with shoes.
Yet like all domestic chores, this one too is infused with meaning, if we will only bother to notice it.
These children are growing up; it’s why they need new shoes every few months. The bigger their feet get, the closer they are getting to the day when they will walk out our front doors in shoes the same size as ours.
They will wave goodbye, and go off into their own lives. We won’t have to spend a large portion of every August waiting in line at a children’s shoe shop any more, because our children will be gone.
Out in Denver, they’re erecting a Greek temple for the Democratic nominee; in Minneapolis, they’re putting global warming into the GOP platform.
It would be fun to be out there, where cool things are happening. But here in the capital of the free world, it’s almost our turn. And that’s just fine with me.
Examiner columnist Meghan Cox Gurdon is a former foreign correspondent and a regular contributor to the books pages of The Wall Street Journal. Her Examiner column appears on Thursdays.
