As they busied themselves with poster making and decorating their ballot boxes, I realized that we were out of a few materials at home. We needed glue, cereal, shoes for Nadjah, a coat for Liya and Chick-Fil-a.
I cringed and found myself confronted with another decision: Do I go back into the house and retrieve my ring and jam it onto my finger, or do I save time and energy and just leave without it? You see M. I can literally feel the water puddling in my joints, and my fingers are no exception. I knew all of this when I left the house yesterday afternoon, but I simply could not bring myself to force the titanium and gold ornament my husband had given me a decade ago over my joints just to make other people comfortable.
.png "Teen girls Alpharetta")
So out I went. The first two stores I went into presented no problems. Payless had tights on sale, so I snapped those up. The girls go through tights like Liberians go through rice.
My next stop was Old Navy, and that was where the elements of respectability politics reared their ugly heads. As I walked into the store, my family was summarily ignored by the manager and the associate who were discussing a display at its entrance. No big deal. An associate way in the back was kind enough to point me to the clearance rack where I found a coat for Liya at a great price.
The children were wandering the aisles โ and not quietly โ so I rounded them up and headed for the checkout lane. A woman with stringy brown hair and glasses sternly waved me over. I smiled as if to pardon her error. As my children continued to play, she glanced over at them regularly.
