a man's boots

My grandfather is 92 years old and wears cowboy boots every day. His boots always come to mind when I think of him. He is a man that I always enjoy hearing talk about his life. His stories are about hard-work and the joy and pain that come with it. He has lived through the advent of the telephone, the great influenza epidemic of 1918 that killed his mother and many other Americans, the Great Depression, and several year-long labor strikes. But his stories are always up-beat with mentions of community dances and parties so people could share food during what he calls the hard times, he talks fondly of meeting my grandmother when, on a break from cattle herding, he rode up to her at a well and she offered him water, honing his talent as a miner, and meeting people that have become life long friends in those moments. I relish these stories and the insights he has because of these experiences. Believe me, I could talk for days about all of the collected memories we share, but now that the time I spend with him is less frequent I call upon my memory to remind me of them. When I do so, one image rushes to the forefront of my mind. That image is his boots.

As far as I know, his boots have made the rounds with him for about the last quarter century of his life—all the years of my life or maybe longer. The steps he takes in those shoes are the steps that are part of who I am. When I was little I watched him pull galoshes over them to shovel snow during the harsh Butte winters, I watched him leave paths of smushed grass when he watered the summer-length lawn, I watched him give my brother and sister “horsy rides” on the end of his leg when they were babies, I watched him take long morning walks in those after breakfast, and smash pop can’s under his feet on the concrete in the garage. I gather comfort from knowing that there is something as simple as a pair of shoes that make my grandfather make sense to me.

I like that the things I love so much today are pieces of my grandparent’s and parents lives before I knew them. My grandmothers’ earrings, pins, and plates, my grandfathers’ jeans, boots, and hats, my mother’s books, camera, and photos, and my father’s records, belt buckles, and t-shirts; I like that when I hold these things or wear these things I come to know them in a different way. I like how I get a better sense of them as an individual. I like that these things were loved by them and have become important to me and also hold the potential to become something special to someone else in the future. For me, the handing down of objects is part of the intergenerational fabric of my life, it keeps their history (and somewhat my own) current and alive. I like that. I like that history isn’t just the past because for me it as present as the boots on my grandfather’s feet.