When I was a kid, my dad had these horrible brown patent leather penny loafers that he wore with everything.  They must have been at least fifteen years old before I finally realized how embarrassing they were.  It was a sunny Saturday afternoon in June and I was eleven.  I’d just finished playing a little league softball game (or rather, making clover chains out in left field and ducking for cover underneath Dad’s ratty old baseball glove whenever that blinding chartreuse ball headed my way).  My best friend, Beth, was going home with me to spend the night after the game, and we  ran excitedly towards my dad, who was leaning casually against the front bumper of his little red ‘76 MG convertible and puffing on an expensive cigar a few yards beyond the chain-link fence.  He’d apparently been mowing the lawn and hadn’t changed clothes afterwards, save for the shoes, because, god forbid he get grass trimmings all over his beloved loafers.  He wore a Kentucky blue polo shirt, completely unbuttoned at the top with wisps of curly hair sticking out from the top his darkly tanned chest, and a pair of my older brother’s discarded, faded denim cargo shorts that hit about two inches below his  leathery knees.  They were covered in thousands of tiny green grass trimmings that were starting to fade in color due to the fact that they had been cut off from their water supply in the  ground a couple hours beforehand. The mist of grass on his legs got even thicker and more noticeable on the bright white sweat socks he wore on his feet, which were shoved into clean,  brown patent leather penny loafers.  

“Hey, doc!”  Beth said cheerfully as I leaned forward on my tip-toes to button the bottom two buttons on his polo shirt before wrapping my arms around his neck and taking in his scent of freshly cut grass, sweat, and cigar smoke.  It was a welcome contrast to the scent of sterile antiseptic mixed with sweat and cauterized flesh I was used to experiencing on the few nights he made it home from the hospital after a long day of surgery before I went to bed.  

`“Thanks for coming, Daddy,” I said sweetly before going in for the kill.  “You can’t wear those shoes with shorts and sweatsocks,” I chastised as he took our bags and opened the tiny trunk of the car.  

“Oh?”  he grinned like the Cheshire cat.  “Did your mother put you up to saying that?”

“No!”  I put my hands on my hips and sighed dramatically.  “They just don’t look good!”

Beth raced to the back of the car and looked down at the shoes in question.  “I kind of like them.”

“Hush, Beth!”  I hissed as I climbed over the rolled down window and settled into the passenger seat.  The door worked fine, but I thought it upped my  “cool factor” when I hopped over the door of my dad’s flashy, antique convertible instead of the traditional way of doing things.  

“You got any pennies, doc?”  Beth was one of the few people in town who wasn’t intimidated enough by my father to call him the formal “Doctor Donohue,” or at least “Jack.”  Dad leaned into the car and fished a couple of pennies out of the cup holder, then handed them to Beth.  The knees of Beth’s grey softball pants hit the hot asphalt at Dad’s feet and she went to work at securing the pennies into the stiff leather.  “There ya go!” she said proudly as she stood up and knocked the tiny gravels off her knees with her hands.  “You can’t have penny loafers without pennies in them, can you?”  I groaned as she climbed into the two-seater beside me and squished my hip up against the console while Dad got into the driver’s seat laughing.  

That pair of pennies never left those shoes (thanks, Beth).  One was brand-new, shiny, bright copper, while the other was dingy and dark.  The shiny one was upside down  on “tails” while the dingy one was right-side up on “heads.”  Every time I tried to remove them, or at least flip them around so that they matched, Daddy would swat at my hands away and tell me to “shoo.”  After our conversation at the ballpark, he decided to stop wearing them with socks and thanked me for the fashion advice. I tried to explain to him that what I really meant was that he needed to only wear them with dress socks and long pants.  Alas, my father spent the rest of that summer wearing penny loafers with shorts and no socks.  Of course, he still had tan lines from where his short summer socks stopped at his ankle bone, and he still looked like he was wearing socks.  Over the years, my mom attempted to buy him suitable replacement shoes....

“New pants!” I nearly shouted up at the traffic light in front of me.  I got so excited I inadvertently jerked my foot up off the brake pedal. The car inched forward, and Mason shouted from the backseat.

“Red light!”  I scrambled to push my flip-flop laden foot back down on the brake while Kris laughed.

“That’s what I’m saying!  I totally need new pants.  I mean, my belly didn’t get this big with Mason, but I’m only six weeks away from my due date, so I might as well stick with dresses and skirts, right?”

“Green light!”

I pressed the accelerator and clicked on my left turn signal to drive down Kevin and Kristin’s street.  “I agree.  No sense in buying new maternity pants to get you through the next six weeks or less,”  I answered nonchalantly, as if I’d been listening to her the whole time instead of thinking about the men in my family and their propensity to wear unsightly clothing and accessories.  I smiled, imagining Nick would fit right in.

“Maybe I could give them to you eventually,” she remarked with a smirk.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” I said as I pulled up to the gated community and waited for Kristin to push the button on her keyfob to open the gates.  

“Just a thought.”  She shrugged and I glanced up in the rearview mirror to get a look at my sleeping child in his carseat.  I couldn’t wait to have kids with Nick someday, but we weren’t even married yet, and there was a year-long tour coming up.  Plus, I was just coming off of my own tour, and mothering a three year old was kicking my butt.

“How long do you think they’ll be?”  I asked as I pulled into the driveway.  The guys, perfectionists that they were, decided that they needed more practice before going their own separate ways for a week before they got on a plane headed for China, and the kids were getting antsy, so we decided to go home.  

Kristin shrugged as she opened the door and took a deep breath, before swinging her legs around and hoisting herself up out of the passenger seat.  “It depends on how much rehearsing  they’re planning to do once they get to China.”

I gave her an understanding nod.  “You think I have time to go buy Nick some new sweatpants?”

She laughed and opened the back door for Mason, who had already unbuckled his own seatbelt and jumped down to the floorboard from his booster seat.  “Good luck with that.  You should see Kev’s closet.  The man’s got more shirts than I so, and that denim one’s about the only one he wears.”

I shrugged.  “Well, Leighanne says to just close my eyes and toss them.  Leigh says to burn them so he can’t fish them out of the trash.  Rochelle says to just grin and bear it.  I’m not so sure I like any of those options.  We’re not married yet, so he’s still trying to impress me.  Maybe he’ll wear the new ones and put the old ones away in a drawer somewhere.  It’s worth a shot.”

Kristin gave me a sympathetic smile.  “Good luck with that.”