Abbey's Road: Filling big shoes

On the day of her eighth-grade graduation, Bookworm sent me a text during her lunch break, asking for photos of herself as a baby or “at least no older than like 5.”

She never explained their purpose, so I presumed it was for a graduation slideshow; only later was I informed that it was for a friend’s TikTok. Had I known this was the case, I would not have dropped everything I was working on to resurrect our family’s old photo site only to be sucked into a rabbit hole that opened into 2009.

(I am going to submit this photo to the newspaper for publication, so I am not concerned about it appearing in the webosphere; this is what she gets for being the daughter of a newspaper columnist and she is generally OK with that.)

First, I found a baby picture of her sleeping like a little cherub on the living room couch in the tiny yellow house our family of then-three was renting at the time.

I remember everything about what was happening in the background of that photo: The ill-fitting faux-suede slipcover and how hot the room was and the way the afternoon sun came through the windows; how I couldn’t stop looking at my firstborn, just laying there, and wondering how such a miracle came into my possession.

(Did I have similar thoughts when changing dirty diapers at 3 a.m.? No, I would say not.)

The baby pictures were good, but it was the second one — the one with the shoes — that got me.

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In this photo, she is 3 and in her “dress phase,” during which she insisted on wearing a dress every day of her life, never mind that it was snowing outside, or she had gymnastics class or there were actually none clean.

She’s smiling the cheesy grin of a 3-year-old, with her hands, for a reason lost to time, crossed over her heart. The baby cheeks are there and a little button nose that has changed since then, but the brows and eyes are unmistakably hers.

Her favorite stuffed animal — still very much her favorite — has been cast aside for the photo, and the sun is shining on her feet.

She is wearing my shoes.

Her little feet are swallowed up by my size 10 clodhoppers, and I look at this photo more than a decade later and realize her feet would nearly fit those shoes (which I sadly no longer own) if she were to try them on today.

And this is childhood, is it not?

It’s graduation season, and across the country, parents are going through photo albums (mostly digital) and reminiscing about moments like these, when our chubby-cheeked babies hammed it up for the camera and had favorite toys and wanted to be just like us.

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Our kids try on our shoes because they see us put them on and go to work or the grocery store or church or school, and in their little brains, this is a thing to aspire to.

It’s a novelty to them, to have their tiny feet swallowed up in our cavernous footwear, but it also makes them feel special and important: “Look, I’m like Daddy!” (Tiny, who is 7, did this with Mr. Roy’s shoes just the other day.)

And then at some point, they become comfortable in their own footwear, and it’s no longer a novelty to try on Mom and Dad’s: They’re ready to be their own person, blaze their own trails.

By the time graduation day comes, we grab our cameras and watch them shake someone’s hand and receive a piece of paper and we realize that those days of standing in our shoes slipped away a long time ago, but they were not for naught.

We have a finite number of years to pour into our kids; to show them what the footwear looks like when we wear it correctly. We will not always get it right. It’s not our job as parents to always get it right; it’s our job to work hard and admit when we make mistakes and hold their hands when their ankles are wobbly so that someday they will be able to walk well on their own.

Abbey Roy is a mom of three girls who make every day an adventure. She writes to maintain her sanity. You can probably reach her at [email protected], but responses are structured around bedtimes and weekends.

This article originally appeared on Newark Advocate: Graduation is a reflection on the journey of independence