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Published on 1/8/2009

As I sit here contemplating the New Year and all that it brings, my thoughts turn to my three daughters and how the New Year always seems to make them another year older, not to mention yours truly as well.

I began to have some melancholy thoughts, remembering when all three of my girls were younger, still at home, still under my care and needing me as a father to provide those things that fathers do. Now my two oldest are married and have little girls of their own.

My two oldest daughters are always accusing me of being a lot easier on their little sister than I was on them. They are probably right. When you start off with kids as a young couple, they do not come with an instruction manual.

For some reason, I began to think about buying clothes and shoes for my daughters as they were growing up.

It seems that they reached a certain spot around 8 or 9 years of age when they seemed to be outgrowing their clothes almost as fast as you bought them. I remember well after my wife passed away and Courtnee, my youngest was around 8 years old that I didn't have the privilege of letting her mother take her shopping for clothes as I had been accustomed to before. It fell to me, and I confess I wasn't very good at it.

Courtnee seemed to be needing new shoes every couple of months or so. I remember that she would get excited at the prospect of getting new shoes.

Her eyes would light up when she realized her shoes were getting too small. She would come bounding into the room where I was, to proudly announce to me that she needed some new shoes because her toes were starting to be scrunched up in her shoes again.

She was ecstatic, but Dad was not. To her, it was another trip down to the mall, and maybe just maybe she would be able to buy clothing as well as the shoes.

I, as her father was thinking about that other trip down to the mall as well, but not quite in the same light. My excitement was at a totally different level. She's thinking about new shoes and possibly some new clothes and all I can think of is, the cost, "What new shoes, so soon, again?"

I'm talking to myself asking, "Didn't I just buy her new shoes? Why is it something so small in size as compared to an adult's shoes doesn't cost proportionately less than an adult shoe?"

I mean it takes less leather, or whatever that stuff is that they make shoes out of now. Why doesn't it cost less? And why is it that there can be a hundred different styles of shoes on the shelves and my then 8-year-old daughter could walk in, take one long look up and down the aisle and instinctively walk over and pick up the only pair that is not on sale?

In addition to that, I knew intuitively that those shoes would be in the top five percent of the most expensive shoes in the store. Was she born with that "gift"? Or was that something she had learned? I wondered who taught her that. Is it a girl thing? Do third grade teachers teach that as part of their classroom curriculum?

When you buy a pair of "tennis shoes" now you need to see your banker before going to the store. It is crazy. And to top it off, they aren't even really tennis shoes, they are running shoes or walking shoes or ... the list goes on and on. And just try to buy her a plain simple pair of white or black "sneakers." You get the feeling as a father that you have just condemned her to a life of extreme hardship or in biblical terms you feel you have condemned her to a place where there is "weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth."

Now in all fairness to my daughter, she really didn't complain if I bought her something less than what she wanted. She accepted it and toted the bag with the new shoes home. I did notice that she didn't wear them home as she did the ones that she really wanted. I also noticed that she put them up in her closet, still in the box and maybe even the bag too. Actually, they went into storage, because she would not wear them.

They stayed in her closet, until she instinctively knew she had outgrown them and then she would proudly bring them and show them to me, making sure I saw and understood that she had outgrown them, never mind that she had never even worn them. She would announce to me that it was now time to go and buy her some more new shoes that fit her feet.

It was a never-ending process... ah... but you see therein lies the rub. It is a process that does end one day, not just because she has stopped growing, but because she has grown up and moved out or married and lives somewhere else. That has already happened to me with my two older daughters and as I sit here thinking of that ... all misty eyed, I think I can "endure" buying new shoes for a while longer. But now as I wake up and smell those proverbial roses, the fact of the matter is, at 16, my daughter no longer even wants me to go shopping with her... well unless I will go along and behave myself... i.e. sit in the mall, and wait on her to come out with the shoes she has bought with the money I have given her. It's easier to just give her the money and stay home.

This concept is a perfect representation of life for us. We spend most of it wishing that what we are going through right now would end, so we could get on with something else more interesting.

As I look back over the joyous times with my three daughters, I somehow don't remember the "pain" of buying them new shoes seemingly on such a regular basis that it "hurt."

I just wish that they were still small and at home with me again. I'd definitely do some things differently. Ah, but I still have one at home now. I wonder...? Hum... I think I'll pick her up from school today and take her to the mall to buy some new shoes.

Wait a minute, I can't pick her up, she drives herself to school now. What can I do...? I know... I wonder if my two older daughters will let me take the grandkids shopping. Maybe?

Probably not, they will remember the ugly shoes I made them come home with, just because they were "cheaper." They will instinctively know not to trust this father turned grandfather with the purchase of shoes. What's a man to do? In the shopping world, it is definitely a woman's world. Maybe I'll just go sit on the mall bench and remember....

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Dr. C. Bradley Morris is pastor of First Assembly of God in Georgetown. His email is: PastorBrad@sccc.tv