The shoes
Nice shoes
Last week I was looking for frames in the office closet and I saw how much of Randy’s stuff is still there. Spur of the moment I decided to take his remaining shoes to the thrift store and made an appointment for drop off.
A few days later I brought a box into the office but didn’t put anything in it. The day before the donation date I started putting shoes into the box and realized I would need more boxes—3, it turned out. He had SO MANY shoes. Thousands of dollars worth, a collection created over the 20 years he worked for Ariat and first took an interested in footwear. And men’s shoe styles don’t change so they last forever, and he wore them all. He was a careful shopper, did his research, shopped sales, and took care of them with polish and brushes and whatever. He had special tools, for Pete’s sake! Mr Meticulous.
I had been donating them bit by bit, and of course they brought up memories. Those Adidas—he spent a lot of time browsing all the styles online, in many locations. And finally he found the exact right pair—I wondered if they were the same style he wore in high school, but I don’t really know. He had a pair of chukka boots (that’s what they called them when we were in high school) and I thought they were sexy. Which is ridiculous—I don’t know why, but I really liked the way they looked on his feet. And so many good dress shoes—that’s what my family called them. There were everyday shoes and dress shoes. Because they were poor and dress shoes were special. Growing up I had nice shoes I wasn’t allowed to wear except for special occasions, and there weren’t any, so I outgrew them without wearing them much.
I didn’t pay attention to the names of the styles of Randy’s dress shoes and I really didn’t see the need for so many pairs. But I had to admit—reluctantly—how they completed an outfit and made him look polished in his sport coat and jeans.
That evening, of course, after donating the shoes I started to think. I thought about Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, which I read after Randy died. Her much loved husband died while she was in the next room, he just keeled over. And she couldn’t give away his shoes because she has this odd nagging feeling that he might come back and need them. I thought she was probably in shock, as I had been. It’s hard to think clearly and even harder to be practical.
There were 2 pairs of Randy’s shoes that were so beat up I didn’t put them in the boxes—I just thought I would toss them in the trash. But that night I thought, nah—I’ll just keep them.