Leach column: There's nothing quite like barefoot weather

All through winter, we dreamed of the day we could go barefoot again. We wedged double-socked feet into rigid snow boots; our toes wriggled like worms on fishhooks. Scrunched together, covered with layers of protection, they grew soft and white. Tender.

Then spring came. Every day after school we’d beg to go outside barefoot. "Not yet!" we’d hear. We watched the thermometer, reporting the temperature like crazed weathermen:

"MOM! IT’S 70 DEGREES OUT THERE!"

"The ground is still cold," she’d say. "Not yet." We grumbled and groaned and waited.

The days grew longer and brighter. The sun pulled new grass from the dirt in the yard. Sweaters were left behind on afternoon buses. Socks crept down sweaty legs.

Finally, summer came. And just when we thought out feet would spontaneously combust from the heat in our shoes, we got the go-ahead.

"Okay. Take ‘em off." We were as excited as new converts at the riverbank. Our shoes were abandoned right where we stood; jumbled laces and tangled tongues littered the porch in a panting pile.

Like paroled inmates, we stumbled into the light of summer, feeling a freedom only the newly barefoot understand.

We tried to act tough — stepping onto sharp gravel with tender soles and solemn faces. It hurt, but we wouldn't show it. We knew there would be foot-related injuries in those early barefoot days. Cuts from unseen glass. Stubbed toes from uneven concrete. Stone bruises and splinters.

With each injury, we limped inside; Mom speckled our scraped skin with stinging Merthiolate and peppered our ears with warnings. But we also knew, as sure as we knew anything, that by the end of the summer the bottoms of our feet would rival the strength and endurance of any shoe sole. We would be able to run on rocks, climb jutty hills, and tromp through jungles of weeds without a flinch.

We gave our bare feet a chance to touch all the textures of outside: feathery blades of brilliant grass, sticky globs of highway tar, powdery clods of dried-up mud puddles.

Bees raided the clover we walked through and ants scurried for their lives as we passed.

Nothing felt better than to tunnel into cool mud with defiant toes, pushing deeply into the murky brown and hitting the solid underneath and scraping hieroglyphics across slimy slicks of dirt with digits never intended for penmanship.

The mud dried on our feet all crumbly and warm; homegrown socks we wore with pride as we ran for our bikes or the tire swing.

When it was time to come in for the night, we knew what Mom would say: "Don't you DARE come in this house with those filthy feet! Only animals run around barefoot!"

Her smile would always give her away, though. We looked down to see her thick, sturdy toes waving at us from feet that had wished for Barefoot Weather, too.

Take off your shoes this summer and remember how wonderful Barefoot Weather used to feel.