A post on X caught my attention a couple of days ago. It took me back to my childhood and brought back memories of old shoes. The post came from a former Canadian serviceman who became a Man of the Cloth, as I gather from his bio. He posted a picture of an old pair of shoes he had repaired. These shoes of his go back to 1988 (see below).
Specifically, seeing this post about old shoes reminded me of my father wearing old but well-kept shoes.
I don’t know how many pairs of shoes my father had when I was a boy but I recall a couple of pairs of classic black and brown shoes, and his cowboy boots. I don’t know what happened to his cowboy boots, or if he even has them anymore. Some of you know that my dad was a rancher. I am making a mental note as I type this to ask him about the boots when I speak to him this coming weekend. I should mention that my dad will be 92 in August.
The X post also made me think of the monument in Cartagena, Colombia (see, there is a Latin American angle to this!). The monument is in honor of the Colombian poet Luis Carlos López. His "A mi cuidad nativa" (To my native city) poem is dedicated to Cartagena. The poem is a lament in some ways. It looks back at what the colonial city of old was and what has become. But in all its bustle it can still inspire the affection that one has for one's old shoes, López wrote. Like old shoes, the city isn’t what it used to be, but he still loves it and would not trade it for any other place. What is old is familiar and comfortable.
The average North American is said to own 19 pairs of shoes but only regularly wears 4 pairs. The attachment is not with any and every pair of shoes one owns, though. In a survey, 52% of women admitted to having an emotional attachment to their shoes. So, it doesn't mean everyone, and typically it means developing an attachment to some of the shoes. I imagine that Imelda Marcos was not attached to every one of the thousands of pairs of shoes that she owned, but she might have had favorites.
Why do we become so attached to shoes? I am not sure I know the answer to that question in any universal sense, but I do know something about my attachment to mine. Shoes are personal garments. They protect and keep our feet warm in inclement weather; they cover our feet in intimate ways. They are in some way a reflection of who we are and what we do (You can tell lots about someone by just looking at the shoes they wear and the state in which they keep them). My old shoes are quite literally instruments that have helped me walk through some of the most interesting places and experiences of my life, good and bad. My old shoes are now like gloves shaped to my aging feet, softer like affection. They are among my longer friendships.
They are a means of self-reliant transport. They take us to places and bring us bring us back. They are a connection to meaningful past events in my life and keep me going forward in the hope of a future that has not always been rectilinear. Shoes connect us to people we love, places we have been, and even places we hope to go.
I have a couple of old pairs of shoes myself, and I am attached to them. That may be the reason that the X post caught my eye. The oldest pair of shoes in my possession are sports shoes, my sprinting cleats that go back to 1977. They are precious to me because they remind me of an era full of the hope of running in the 1980 Olympics —but wars and boycotts happened. I trained in them when I was in the HS Track and Field team, and won some races and long jump competitions wearing them. But I am mostly fond of them because my mother bought them for me on my 14th birthday. They still fit but I have not worn them in decades.
Then there are my hiking boots. They have been with me since 1990, longer than any of my children. They are scratched and scoffed from the shale and rocks on the many trails in half a dozen countries. I wore them on almost every mountain I have ever climbed in the Canadian Rockies, and the Mexican and Peruvian sierras, and almost made it to the top of the Concepcion volcano, on Ometepe Island in Nicaragua, wearing them. I wore them on the tallest mountain I have ever climbed, Mount Temple, in Alberta.
And then there is my old black pair of shoes, which were recently re-soled. I wore them to all my university graduating ceremonies and one teaching award. I call them my “sacramental shoes.” I was married in them and wore them to the baptisms, first communions, and confirmations, and one wedding of my children. I will probably be buried in them. All my boys have bigger feet than mine for the old shoes to be heirlooms
The last time I went to Nicaragua, I brought shoes to be repaired. A cobbler wanders through the neighborhood where my father lives once every couple of weeks. He repaired some of my shoes right in front of the house, sitting on the sidewalk under a tree. But there is nothing like that where I live in South Calgary. Shoe repair is a declining industry, with the number of shoe repairers in the U.S. decreasing by 40% between 1990 and 2019. I suspect it is the same or worse in Canada. It takes a caring effort to preserve shoes now that cobblers are hard to find and it is more expensive to repair most shoes than it is to buy a new pair.
If you have old shoes, I hope you enjoy them. Old shoes are rarer and rarer in a culture that throws everything away.