in my mother's shoes

I never would have thought I could go.  I might not have thought I would have ever wanted to go.

But I did.  The horror of Trump and the opportunity of a bus ticket.

And I'm a catastrophizer you know.  So I plan.  I make lists.  I gather together.  I get back up ready.

There are more important things than signs, but I knew fairly early on what my signs would be.

Hopefully there will be a good one of me and that beet and I'll print it and send it to Tom Robbins!

Shoes (like food) are far more important than signs.  But I didn't have any obvious shoe choices.  I walk a lot, I'm on my feet a lot, but I have muck boots and riding boots and town boots and shoes I wear in the house, and I have alternatives to all of those, and probably not a day goes by that I don't change shoes two or three times.  I've got no boots suitable for walking and standing for hours that don't have holes.  What shoes would I wear?

I have an old pair of running shoes husband bought me shortly after we were married (25 years ago) that are still good.  I thought about those.  But I decided to look in one of the "shoe boxes".  Because when you are poor, when you buy shoes primarily at Salvation Army, you tend to hoard anything that might prove to be useful even if you don't need them right now.  And in that box full of shoes was a pair that had been my mother's.  Rockports.  With her name printed on them so they were almost assuredly her very last shoes.  She likely never actually walked in them.  I'd kept them because they were good shoes and they fit, but I'd never worn them.

So I wore them one whole and entire day to make sure, and yes, they were good.  My WMW shoes.

And it is so . . . comforting . . . so radical . . . so entirely and totally and awesomely appropriate that I walk in the Women's March on Washington, with my daughters, in my mother's shoes.