What it says about me that I wear my father’s shoes

These are my father’s shoes.

No, actually, they’re not. They look exactly like the pair of shoes my father used to wear to work. Black, laces, tapered round toe with perforations all around as if the shoe needs to breathe.

I bought them for my son’s wedding. I wanted to somehow carry both my mother and father with me on that day. They would have been very happy and proud grandparents, much the way Joan and I are for my son’s and daughter-in-law’s daughter.

We’re funny that way, we humans. At important times in our lives, we all fall back on the “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue” trope usually reserved for brides. Because we all feel the need to carry the memory of our ancestors with us into the future and whatever it may hold.

On the back wall of my work