A few weeks ago I took the boys out shopping, one at a time, so that each of them could choose a new pair of athletic shoes for spring. This is one of the only kinds of shopping that the boys actually enjoy, and so each of our outings was pleasant and productive. Noah and Will each took a turn to carefully look over the wall of brightly coloured shoes, considering the style and useful features and weight of each pair that caught their eyes, and they each tried on their top picks and ran about the store aisles as a test before making their final selections. Both times, we left the store with a boy happily clutching a shoe box, excited to show his dad his choice when we arrived back home.
At the time when we bought the new shoes, the weather was still dismal here, and the ground everywhere was a soggy, muddy mess. Noah and Will asked me day after day if they could wear their new shoes yet, but being the sensible mom that I am, I told them they should keep wearing their well-worn old ones until the worst of the mud had dried up. (You'll understand my thinking if you recall what the boys' school field looks like after it's been subjected to weeks of wet precipitation.) They protested, and kept at me with their pleas, but I did not give in. I carefully monitored the status of our own lawn and kept promising that someday soon, they could get their new shoes out of the boxes. The boys started to doubt that the day would ever come.
Finally, this past weekend, the sun came out in full force and warm temperatures suddenly turned our yard into a suitable playground. The boys looked at their shoe boxes in the closet, and then at me with a cautiously hopeful look in their eyes, and I gleefully announced that FINALLY, they could wear their new shoes. There was much celebrating, and the boys spent all day Saturday happily trying out their footwear in various athletic pursuits. Both of them were very happy to relegate their old shoes to the extra shoe shelf in the garage (as a backup pair, just in case).
Noah wore his new shoes for exactly three days (he had sensibly donned the old ones again on the days it rained earlier this week), and then last night while he was in the pool at swim practice, those new shoes were stolen, just like that, from the boys' change room. Matt and Noah and Will and a collection of helpful coaches and friends scoured the whole pool area to try and find them, but they all turned up nothing. And so it was that a tearful and barefoot boy burst through the front door to greet me at home last night.
I am alternating between feeling sad and being furious that someone could steal a kid's pair of shoes. And this is not the only reminder I've had recently that people can behave in awful ways. Not too long ago, friends of ours had their house broken into in broad daylight while they were all out. The children returned home after school to find their front door bashed in and their house ransacked, and many of the family's valuable and sentimental items had been stolen. I also just received a summons this week to attend court in June for the purpose of jury selection, and I can't stop worrying about actually being chosen for jury duty. I'm terrified of having to hear unforgettable chilling details about the cruel things people sometimes do to one another. It makes me not be able to sleep at night.
I consider myself very fortunate to know so many wonderful, kind, helpful people in my life; this helps to colour my view of the world in bright and happy hues most of the time. But it's hard not to feel down sometimes when I realize how many people are broken, in many ways and for many reasons, and I don't have the first clue how to fix them.
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