Finally, Second Grade Fashion is Back

I called it! Finally my second grade fashion dreams might come true. The moccasin is coming back!

When I was seven, we lived in Japan. We were with the Navy so our family got "base privileges." We could shop at the Navy Exchange: buy American products, eat pizza and all with dollars. (And when even the tooth fairy is giving you yen, a crumply green dollar has a comfortable familiarity to it.) My dad was the one lucky, lucky member of our family who got to go to the bigger base at Yokohama. (And fly in a helicopter to get there, no less!)

I'm now an adult and recognize that my parents values were in the right place: don't spend money to take your kids to shop for a limited selection of KMart-grade, US products when there are beautiful shrines and parks around Japan to visit.

But when you're seven this logic is lost. If I wasn't allowed to go to the big base with him, Dad was willing to bring us back something. He asked, 'what did we want from the base?' I asked for moccasins. I really wanted Minnetonka moccasins.

All the real wanting to go back home, to be with my friends in the States, got assigned to this shoe. Kind of poetic that little Claire picked such a true American shoe, inspired by the Native Americans. It wasn't that I so badly wanted that shoe, so much that I wanted to be back in America, eating Oreos, watching cartoons in English, not Japanese.

I feel a little guilty now, because Dad probably did look for moccasins, but a specific shoe can be hard enough to find at DSW or Nordstrom's, never mind a child's shoe at the Navy Exchange. Like Prince Charming looking for Cinderella, except it was the glass slipper that was missing. I might as well have asked for the coordinating teepee too.

So it was a childhood dream unfulfilled. The yearning for the moccasin at seven was the wanting of a big wheel at six or a Cabbage Patch Kid at eight.
I dreamed of this traditional beaded moc.Not sure if Jason would be embarrassed to be seen with me if I were wearing these. It seems like they'd be a perfect birthday present for self in September.

Here are the ones Leah recommended the last time I was musing about mocs, Manimals. I can't decide on my favorite color, and my mother is whispering in my ear telling me that an ivory shoe is impractical for how dirty it'd get as I scuff it along CTA steps.But this is about making your daughter's dreams come true, Mom.