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“Tell me something, just how long have you had those shoes????”

I looked down at my old, worn-out sneakers. “Um…fifteen years. Since high school. Why?”

My friend Monica stared at me, wide-eyed. “You tell me you haven’t bought any shoes in fifteen years?”

I laughed and said, “Of course not. It’s just that I’ve had these shoes for fifteen years.”

She gave me one of those looks that those people on the makeover shows give to the fashion-impaired. “Okay, girl, we’re going shoe shopping for you. No questions. Come on.”

“But I don’t need to go shoe shopping.”

She looked over at Christina, who sat in her stroller, gleefully destroying a blueberry muffin and scattering the pieces all over the Starbucks floor. “And I take it you bought those Strawberry Shortcake shoes for her?”

“Grandma bought them for her.”

“My point is that you’d buy new shoes for your kids before you’d buy new shoes for yourself. Even to the point where your sneakers are fifteen years old and falling apart. Yeah, I know, it’s a mom thing. Your kids mean the world to you and you’d do anything to provide for them first. But girl, you need to do something nice for you too, now and then.”

I sighed. As parents, how often do we overlook our own needs in favor of our kids? It’s coded into our genes, I think, to cherish and protect our children, and provide all we can for them. It’s what mothers do. It’s the very definition of “parent”. How often do we buy the new Strawberry Shortcake light-up shoes while ours are falling apart. How often do we buy our kids food and let ourselves go hungry? Parents sacrifice so much for their kids; that’s what we do. Most times, at a cost to ourselves.

Self-denial can be bad when you take it too far. Yes, I’m a parent. Yes, I’d do anything for my kids. But I’m more than just “Mommy” or “wife”. I’m “Annie” too. And my sneakers are falling apart. Annie needs to go buy shoes. The first time in God knows how long. I need to take care of me too, and more often than not, I put myself on the back burner.

This time, though, Monica’s right. I need to unbend my “Mommy pride” and allow myself to be indulgent now and then. A little.

“Okay,” I said ruefully. “Let’d do it.”

Monica grinned. “Just promise me something.”

“What?”

“Don’t wait fifteen years to buy new shoes. Even Mommies need do it more often than that.”

(BTW, I found a pair of slip-ons and a pair of boots for “buy one, get 50% the second”. See, Mommy instincts still kick in.)

[tags]parents, moms, dads, kids, children, shoes, sacrifice[/tags]
Photo graciously provided by salto14, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved