I turned the knob slowly, believing that anything I could do to preserve a few more minutes of silence would be worth it. Hannah, who falls asleep more slowly, was the first to respond. “Is it time?” she said. “Yes, it’s time again. Get up little girl.”
I walked over to her brother’s bed. “Aaron, c’mon. It’s time.” He rolled over, groggy. “Grab your things and put on your shoes.”
Growing up, it seemed that there were two types of people in the world: those that wore shoes in the house and those that didn’t. Neat people left shoes by the door, fastidious about white carpets and shiney linoleum. People less concerned about cleanliness and those with wood floors left shoes on, mostly.
But there’s something more to it than that, right? “Kick your shoes off and sit a spell” is what the old folks say. Even those who had dirt floors. Shoes-off in the house is about more than cleanliness. It’s about ease. Shoes-off in the house is about more than just safety. It’s about Sabbath. It’s about cessation of work, cessation of anxiety. Shoes-off is how we want to live, at least in a metaphorical sense.
If things really got bad there would be room for four in the closet. This was still just the tornado warning. First would come the breaking glass, then the freight train, then ducking inside and shutting the door and holding on for our lives. For the moment, Erica and I sat in the hallway, kids uneasily dozing in the closet-cum-storm-shelter, everyone with their shoes on,… [Read more…] about Shoes on — a Hurricane Story