Rambling in My Blue Plaid Shoes

Slept in this morning because I was still hurting pretty badly in my lower back, but it's better than yesterday and I found a way to lay that did not produce pain until I tried to move or get out of bed. Still, that was better than the day before. Not sure what I did to get this pain, but I sure don't want to do it again. Changing my chair in front of the computer seemed to make a vast improvement and sitting while weeding worked too...hence the raised bed ideas seem better and better.

Yesterday I put on my blue plaid slip-on shoes and because they are a bit bizarre, I wore them out socializing. When you wear them with jeans they don't show as much and don't make as big of an impact on someone else's psyche, but I had them on nonetheless. They are so very comfortable that I'm wearing them again today, with my slightly different colored blue-green plaid shirt. The kind that buttons down the front, has short sleeves and feels like there's not much for fabric in them. Great on a warm breezy day – like today.

So, I found my blue plaid shoes at the local department store. I found them in the boys section and they were $4.99. SOLD! I was looking for some flats to wear to work but could not find any suitable ones that looked comfy and plain. Comfort was and is the big issue. I'm short and flats don't do anything for me except allow me to not have to think about my painful ankles or the blisters from those fancy shmansy stilettos that I wore for the meeting last week. I'm a flats person all the way except when I have the opportunity to wear sandals or go barefoot and barefoot is my shoe of choice. When I walk down the gravel road to our mailbox I sometimes envision myself barefoot, with a piece of grass hanging out of my mouth, a bit of a breeze blowing through my long curls, just as relaxed as a person could ever be without sleeping.

I think I looked that way at one point in my life. I remember a lot of days when my best friend Dawn and I would be walking down the blacktop road that led to town from my house. She was usually on my green and white Schwinn bike and I'd walk beside her. She veered all over the road so that I could keep up with her but we were in no hurry, nowhere that we actually had to be. I'd pull out a shaft of grass from some growing alongside the road, check it over for bugs, then chew on the end. It would be lightly sweet. We'd be off adventuring later, but that was how we usually started out on those long summer days.

Writing about these things, brings those pictures up in my mind. Sometimes so very clearly that I can smell the hot tarmac and feel it move and ooze between my toes, leaving my footprints on the long black path. I wonder sometimes are my footprints are still there? One here, one there? Small impressions of a very small foot. Large impressions left in a very young mind.

It's amazing what can trigger these bits and pieces of a person's past. What you remember and what actually happened – well there's no pictures other than what's in your head that can prove the truth. However, I would not question their validity. What would be the point? When I hear a bumblebee buzz past, I can bring up memories of fields of daisies. When I look up into a blue sky dotted with horsetail clouds, I can bring up memories of laying out in the hay field looking up at those clouds and daydreaming. Pleasant things, things of wonder.

They say that as you get up in the years, your memories become larger, take up more of your life and become more important. I'm not so sure that is true. As we get older, we may become more sedentary and have more time for remembering, but I don't think that the memories grow or change much. You just become more practiced at bringing them up in your head.

As I finish writing this tidbit, I look again at my blue plaid shoes and smile. One day they will be a memory that I can bring back up. What will I remember about them?