There is nothing like the challenge of winter coming on to make one long more for the good old days of summer. In an earlier column, I related how although I was born without shoes it took a considerable amount of time to convince me I could not remain that way the rest of my life.

More often than not, my shoes were never where I was.

That didn’t matter much when my parents and I were still living in town and the surfaces I traveled on my daily ventures had lots of strips mama called sidewalks. “Stay on the sidewalk, Lois, you’ll stub your toe again.”

Why was she always saying that? I knew it could happen and mainly would on the ‘sidewalk’ because of all those funny little cracks across them every so often. I had to take such big steps to get over them. That was when it usually happened, it seemed.

When I was four, we moved to the country. But there were sidewalks there too, cracks and all, big ones. But now I could run long distances on the soft dirt and grass without anything bad happening.

And shoes only had to be worn when we went to town. It’s funny, but I kind of fancied my summer shoes. They were mostly all soft ones with lots of straps. The winter ones were stiff and tight, always hurting—more so in the springtime. Mama said it was because my feet were growing so fast…without shoes.

I began to worry that shoes might be becoming a bothersome part of my life forever, particularly when I started to school and the teacher told me I had to keep them on like everyone else. They were warm in the winter, I had to admit. But there was a time, yet to come, when I would learn there’d be more than just shoes I would need on my feet. And, they would not only be tight, they would be heavy. Overshoes, what a clever description for them that was.

But, ah yes, there would always be summer.

So that was then and now is now. It’s a wonder my feet ever survived. They avoided shoes and the like and they became camel-size. The reason, of course, as my mother claimed, was because they didn’t know where to stop spreading to without shoes.

The real truth is she also had big feet. But, that’s alright, it’s all for the better now to keep me from stubbing my toe when I try to step over all the big cracks in the sidewalks.