Our oldest son has been obsessed with buying a pair of Birkenstocks for months. When that child gets something in his head, he’s like a dog on a bone and it is ALL you will hear about for days. Weeks. Months.

Eternity.

During our recent trip out west, he was bent on visiting every shoe store we passed. When we wouldn’t willingly drag our family of six wild people into these tiny, super laid back Colorado shoe stores, he got irritated. After the eightieth attempt to get us to walk in, he finally muttered, “You just don’t understand.”

Ummmmmm, okay, Fresh Prince, let’s have a little talk.

And so it came to pass, on a cool summer day in Estes Park, Colorado, my son and I had a chat and an eventual mother/son revelation.

I let Reid know I actually had my own pair of ‘Birks’ way back in the 90s. He paused, apparently shocked at the thought, and likely trying to decide whether he risked asking if people actually wore shoes WAY back then.

Grabbing a rare moment of speechlessness from him, I told him I had also been lured in by the coolness of the ‘Jesus shoes’ and HAD to have my own pair. I told him how I adored those sandals and wore them all over IU, making my way from the north to east side of campus dozens of times each week. I let him know I kept the box LONG after I stopped wearing the shoes.

Riding high on the look in his eyes and the realization he was momentarily seeing me not just as a mom but an actual person, I shared a bit more. I surprised him when I told him I had actually visited Colorado once before when I was not too much older than he is now. I told him I had once been a little more fearless and camped near the Tetons for a few days. I fished from a stream, using a fly rod for the first time. I blew his mind when I told him I caught my dinner, a Rainbow Trout, and cooked it over an open fire. I told him about full body brain freeze from a quick bath in the same stream, which was nothing more than ice cold runoff from the snowy peak above. I didn’t have a thermometer but I know it had to have been just slightly above ice chunk temperature.

Having just experienced a little altitude sickness of his own, I told Reid how I naively thought using a treadmill for the seven days prior to that trip in the 90s would surely prep my body for a four day hike. That memory and the realization I actually kept up pretty well was a bit of contrast to the 41 year old body I dragged on this summer’s trip.

Ahh, youth…..wasted on the young.

Reid and I had a nice time talking about how I wasn’t always The Mom. I used to latch onto ‘cool things’ and obsess until I owned them, too. Before I saw the veil of ‘she’s my mom‘ pass back over his eyes, I relished in watching him think of me as a peer for a bit.

He eventually spent every dollar he’d been saving for a lifetime on a pair of Birkenstocks. I know he’ll never forget buying them in a small store with a sweet Portuguese Water Dog named Goose. He’ll never forget counting out the tax on that town square nestled snug in the Rocky Mountains. He’ll never forget wearing those shoes nonstop all summer.

I hope he’ll also never forget those brief moments when he realized Mom is more than a mom.

On our drive back to Indiana, I told Matt I could kick myself for giving away my old sandals. I hang onto EVERYTHING and couldn’t believe I had given away such a prized possession.

A week later, on what happened to be a really crumby day, Matt surprised me with the sandals. He found them in a box that hadn’t been unpacked from our move.

Six years ago.

Within it were a dozen other things mummified from my college years. I slipped those shoes on, still molded to my footprint, and felt a little bit ‘17 and carefree’ again.

While these may look like just an old pair of sandals, these ancient leather beauties, circa 1995, helped me achieve Cool Mom status (or perhaps Formerly Cool Emily status) if only for a minute.

Regardless of title, I was someone different in the eyes of my pre-teen for a moment and it was as comforting as those old sandals.

What old favorites of your past life might be worth unearthing for the sake of common ground or simple nostalgia with your kids?