NOW, I’m not one to panic over small
sounds coming out of nowhere, but
these here voices were coming from boots and even a pair of shoes in my room, “Bob, write about us today please!” You don’t disobey shoes and boots considering they can bite, and bite quite a lot of feet away, so it’s shoes and boots today, and why not, there’s lots about them I’d like to say.
Like two years ago in the bitter snow of Chicago, I stepped into a mall, and felt like a tramp or some vagabond; bitter snow or cold outside, the shoes worn by others were good, fancy ones and as I looked at my own, old pair, I realized that whatever the situation outside, I needed to put my best foot forward, suited and booted and looking fighting fit! Or the time, I looked at the pair of canvas shoes that lay among my father’s belongings after his death; I saw a splash of fresh paint on shoe.
My father had been an artist in New York, and for executing some of his work, he had to climb a small ladder, due to which some paint must have fallen as he climbed, holding paint tin and brush and himself. That shoe lay by my bed for many years, reminding me it was never too late to work! ‘Keep going Bob!” was what dad’s shoe always said to me.
And then the time when a friend of mine, who I’d helped in his time of need, and when I say need, it was much he needed, and one day, while sitting with him, he handed me a pair of old boots, “This doesn’t fit me!” he said, “I think it’s your size, take it!”
I looked at the pair of old, scratched, worn out pieces of leather, and was about to refuse in righteous indignation when I realized he was reciprocating my own gesture of giving, from his meagre bounty. I took the shoes, tried them on, and wore them, always reminding myself that even the less fortunate had a pride and dignity you had to keep alive for them! I look down at the floor, and swear I can see my shoes and boots grinning at each other, “Lots of memories Bob?” “Yes!” I whisper, but there’s one memory that stands out and that was the time when I was dead broke, it was around Christmas many years back, and I looked at a pair of new shoes through a shop window, “No money Lord!” I’d whispered. That evening my brother came home.
I opened the gift he left behind, it was the same pair of shoes I’d seen at the window! “I’ll provide them Bob!” I seemed to have heard a whisper from above and that’s what He’s done every day of my life! I hear shoes and boots, slowly returning to their old silence, they’d surely reawakened a host of lovely memories..!
