Roots, Shoes and Springtime

Last week I started out to work in the garden...I was sitting on a bench pondering shoes and spring and bare feet.
I could not for the life of me remember shoes from my childhood. What would I wear? My immediate answer(in my mind) was no shoes. Bare feet. Spring was ushered in by the arrival of barefoot flowers. Moma would tell us we could shuck our shoes when the barefoot flowers bloomed. The meadows would be adrift in soft, pinkish-blue coverlets of tiny barefoot flowers. The ground was still hard and cold when those blushing little beauties would peep out. It was truly the harbinger of spring. Flurries of activities would commence. We would start burning the tobacco and lettuce beds. We would clean out fencerows, throwing the overgrowth into the burning piles of everything accumulated over winter. A clash of wills would occur most every year between Moma and Uncle DH....He would have his ragged truck bed filled with old tires to throw on the fire...Moma hated the thoughts of burning rubber. It spoiled the lovely rite of spring that cleansed everything unsavory from her long, hard winter. Moma would usually prevail, until, sometime after she left to take us all to bed, then the tires would make the cut and the flames would send black, stinky, sooty smoke across the hills. I am sure this led to a fierce argument the next day, but, Moma never seemed to win in the long run.
As we cleared the fencerows, clogged full of young sassafras trees, Moma would dig a small bucket full of their roots. She would wash the dirt off, get her biggest pot and cover the roots with fresh spring water. She would poke the wood stove up a bit and set the roots to simmer for a few hours. Later, she would set down a small cup for the little kids and bigger cups for bigger kids and normal cups and saucers for she and Daddy. This was a required spring tonic and had to be choked down.... no matter what. The sassafras tea was the color of burnt sienna( my favorite color in the box) and when doused with a few illegal teaspoons of sugar, could be swallowed rather quickly. I never learned to love the taste of sassafras tea. However, many, many years later I asked Mom to boil a pot of sassafras tea. It was an unusually cold late spring day, so we bundled up and grabbed the grubbing hoe, heading toward the back lane, to find some suitable trees. Moma dug the correct amount of roots and we sprinted back to the warm kitchen. She made a pot of the tea and I dumped in the sugar, as I remembered, and to my surprise I absolutely loved the flavor. Moma said, you were so silly, I couldn't get a thing down your throat without you squalling. I suspect that is true. She didn't divulge what happened when I squalled, and for the sake of my reputation, I won't either.

This brings me to shoes. I emailed and asked Dan, what shoes did Moma wear?
I could see Daddy in his brogans, kept perfect with a rub of lard now and again. I could see him pulling on his galoshes, kept on the porch, to wear to the barn or fox hunting.
Moma? I couldn't find a thing on her feet. The thing I do know, she was never keen on going barefoot.
Dan sent back this reply:
She said,
"Just old shoes after they got old."
"I guess I had lace up shoes."
"Whatever was old and wasn't fit to wear anywhere else."

Our mother, ever resourceful, made do.
If there ever was a paean to our mother, a song for her life, this would be it.