Summer shoes

So, I learned long ago, you can look at someone's feet and learn a lot about them. You can tell even more about them as they shed their wintry shoes for the la-la-la summer. The white shoes after Memorial Day rule seems so passé.

Now, normally, I chase after the kids wearing my fabulous (!) FitFlops or outdoorsy Keens. But, Memorial Day ushered in summer and beach going and with it, a new era in my shoe closet. Weeks ago, I went to Shoe Shak in Hanover Center, which has an amazing array of shoes. I love browsing through the aisles and rows, watching the acrobatics of the shoes in dashes of spring pinks and greens and silver and gold. I bought a pair of Yellow Box shoes that are so not me that they have become me. Black flip-flops with a couple inches of stiletto heel…topped off with an array of chunky, dazzling rhinestones.

I hid them in a drawer, so as to not alert my six-year old (who is already a decidedly messy clothes horse). Getting into the festive "Holiday Weekend = Beginning of Beach Season" Friday night, with as much nonchalance as I could muster, I unveiled these new summer shoes. In the kitchen, wearing my apron, cooking dinner in my work out clothes, decked out in rhinestones. Every girl's dream.

As soon as Veronica saw the shoes, her eyes widened.

"Mom, we must paint your toe nails!"

And paint them she did –along with my toes. The bold red color of summer toenails with a practiced shimmery pink dot in the middle of each nail.

My daughter was in heaven. I'm now ready for summer.