Yesterday, I saw a woman trip on the pavement. She immediately turned to her husband and started to complain.

I couldn’t hear all she was saying, but I was thinking there was really no point in complaining to your husband when you trip on the pavement. It might be your fault, or the fault of the pavement, or the fault of your shoes, but it almost certainly has nothing to do with your husband, and the odds are he is wearing sensible shoes.

San Miguel de Allende, where my husband, Peter, and I spend much of the winter, is a city that requires sensible shoes. The entire town is a World Heritage Site, which means that the things you see outside must look pretty much exactly as they did in the mid-1700s, unless there is some life-threatening reason to change them. Tripping on the pavement does not qualify as life-threatening.

Peter loudly lobbies for hiking poles. He says every person should be using at least one at all times and two if taking a hike of any length. Peter probably has a good point, but he is not going to win this argument with most women, who are going out to dinner and carrying a purse and taking photos with a phone and possibly holding an ice-cream cone or a churro. Adding hiking poles to the ensemble is not going to be an option for most -- in spite of Peter’s well-intentioned entreaties.

I have noticed that footwear varies greatly by age. Young women will wear chunky, practical sneakers with dresses and pull it off with ease and charm. Slightly older women will wear more fashionable footwear and risk falling on the slippery, uneven (but historically accurate) pavement. Women who are older yet will revert to chunky sneakers very similar to the ones their young counterparts are wearing. I can see a convincing argument for skipping the fashionable shoe phase and jumping right to the chunky sneaker phase, but I’m not there yet. And neither, apparently, was the woman complaining to her husband.

Perhaps we are in no hurry to reach the “I’m wearing chunky sneakers for the rest of my life” phase. Or perhaps we somehow relish the challenge of navigating the rounded, irregular stones beneath our feet and making a triumphant entry into the restaurant, unscathed. Or perhaps we are slightly jealous of the women who come in from Mexico City who wear not just impractical shoes but shoes with towering narrow heels, and traipse about the city with a small dog under their arm as if there was no skill involved at all.

My suspicion is that there are women in parts of the world trained from a very early age to manage high-altitude heels and, like learning a foreign language, one will never master it effortlessly unless they begin young. This is surely true of women in Paris. My dearest girlfriend used to live in Paris, and I would fret over what to wear when I went to visit her. She told me before a visit in July, “Don’t worry about what to wear. The streets are filled with tourists in ugly shoes.”

Meanwhile, the men wear pretty much whatever they feel like wearing and manage the cobblestones much better. I agree it makes no sense. I believe my health and safety should come before anything as frivolous as fashion. I can imagine how effortless it would feel to walk after dark on slippery stones with a heavy rubber cushion beneath my feet.

But this does not mean that I’m ready for sensible shoes. Yet.

Till next time,

Carrie

Photos and other things can be found on Facebook at CarrieClassonAuthor.

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FOR RELEASE: MONDAY, MARCH 2, 2026

THE POSTSCRIPT by Carrie Classon

Still Family

I’'ve always known I was lucky when it came to family.

I saw classmates who had impossible siblings, and I knew my curly-headed younger sister was a catch. I knew people who really hated spending time with their parents, and I always had fun with mine -- and I still do.

I grew up with 36 cousins, 34 of whom were on my mother’'s side. It was a lot easier to keep track of my father’'s side of the family, but I always felt somehow rich, having so many cousins spread over so much of the country.

When I married, I acquired another family, a boisterous Catholic family who laughed and drank and cussed more than my own. I immediately loved my mother-in-law who stayed up well past midnight with me, discussing big ideas, and my father-in-law who would listen in for a few minutes, shake his head and say, “"I’'m going to bed!”"

When I divorced, one of the hardest things to accept was that I was going to lose this family I had been given in marriage, a family I had grown steadily closer to for more than 22 years. But that turned out not to be the case.

I’'ve now been divorced and remarried for many years, and those former in-laws are still my family. It was their choice, of course, and possibly not an easy one -- to remain close to a former daughter-in-law or sister-in-law. But my former mother-in-law, who has since passed, set the tone and let me know I’'d always have a place in her heart, and her children followed suit. And I know I am enormously lucky.

Last week, I got to spend time with a couple of them. My former brother- and sister-in-law, Jason and Mandy, came to visit and celebrate their birthdays, and once again, I was reminded of how fortunate I was. My husband, Peter, went hiking with Jason and, as usual, met some friends on the way.

“"Was it awkward, introducing Jason to friends?”" I asked.

“"No, he just introduced himself as your former brother-in-law,”" Peter said. It was not a big deal -- not to Peter, not to Jason, not to anyone.

But it is a big deal.

It is a very big deal for me to still have a strong relationship with these people I love, after the loss of a marriage changed the landscape. I have lost some good friends in the past, and I still feel those losses. To lose an entire family would be terrible. And I have not.

We did not spend much time together. I was busy with a writers’' conference and had less time than I would have liked. But when we were together, we shared funny stories of things we had done years ago, stories of things we are doing today, and stories from our childhoods, before we even knew one another. Of course, my ex-husband was woven into many of these stories, but so were people who had died -- Mandy’'s wonderful husband, my father- and mother-in-law. Circumstances constantly change. But love survives.

More than ever, I realize how lucky I am when it comes to family. And I also realize how little biology or legalities have to do with what makes a family. We need people in our lives who know our stories from the past and are interested in our stories today. We need people who share our old jokes that other people won’'t ever fully understand. We need people who can accept us, along with the changes that are always a part of life -- and remain family.

Till next time,

Carrie

Photos and other things can be found on Facebook at CarrieClassonAuthor.

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My husband, Peter, and I have landed in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and already the strange seems familiar again.

One of the things that impresses me every time I am here is the attention given to jobs that I don't always think of as needing a lot of attention. Masonry work is meticulous and crafted to last centuries. Cloth is woven one thread at a time, creating utterly unique works. Gardening is done with such patience and consistency that there are blooms every month of the year. But this morning, I was noticing the street sweepers.

The street sweepers are legion. I have no idea what their actual numbers are, but in the center of the old town, where we stay, you cannot walk down a street from the first light of morning until well after dark without encountering a person dressed in red, with a homemade broom and a sturdy dustpan affixed to a stick. Litter does not stand a chance in this town. Stray leaves are corralled as they fall. And, to me, the most amazing thing is how they sweep up the confetti.

In San Miguel, there are a lot of reasons to celebrate. There are weddings every weekend, the city throws a party every week, and quinceaneras -- the special 15th birthday party celebrations for girls in enormous poofy dresses -- occur nearly every day. And most of these events involve confetti.

But between Valentine's Day and Easter, cascarones are sold on the street by the boxful. Cascarones are just ordinary eggs with the insides blown out, filled with confetti. Children throw them at each other. Lovers smash them over each other's heads. Everyone runs and laughs, hurling confetti-filled eggs at one another. It is a huge amount of fun. It is also terribly messy.

And so, every evening without fail, the street sweepers are out, sweeping every fleck of confetti and eggshell off the streets, a job that would be tricky under any circumstances, but is made much more difficult because the streets are made of brick and cobblestones.

They sweep up after parades and wedding processions. After the young quinceanera has hiked up her hoop skirt and moved on (usually revealing a pair of sensible sneakers beneath her voluminous skirts), the sweepers move in.

This morning, I was out earlier than usual, and I saw a pickup truck filled with street sweepers. There was a white fence around the pickup bed, and the sweepers were standing in the moving truck, talking and laughing as they were deposited at whatever street corner they were scheduled to start work. And I thought how much I have to learn from the street sweepers.

It is easy to sweep up the big messes. A lot of folks do it, in one way or another. They get paid for doing the bare minimum and that is the end of it. But to do a job -- particularly a job that few people truly appreciate -- to do that job really well takes a special kind of dedication and, I believe, repays the sweeper in a special way.

Showing up earlier than absolutely necessary, smiling at the person I am working with, doing a bit more than is required just to make the next person's work a little easier -- there is an intrinsic value to these things that brings joy and a sense of accomplishment.

The sweepers show me the value of a job well done, whether one is creating something that will last for decades, or sweeping up the confetti that will surely fall again later that day.

Till next time,

Carrie

Photos and other things can be found on Facebook at CarrieClassonAuthor.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION