Ode to my Shoes

I should have posted this long ago...It is an ode to my favorite pair of shoes.

Four years ago before graduating, before leaving to England, my mom purchased a pair of shoes that I would need for walking around England. I've never been a shoe person, heaven only knows what I was walking around in for the previous 18 years, I usually only wear about three pairs each year. Well whatever I was wearing had worn out their welcome and it was time for a new pair of shoes. My mom instructed me to wear them everywhere so I would have a comfortable pair for England. I did.

I wore these shoes the last mile run I did at Weber High. I wore them out when my sometimes boyfriend came to pick me up for a last hurrah before graduating. I was wearing them at the all night graduation party where I said goodbye to my friends. I wore them on a plane and they stepped off to meet the soil foreign to my body but familiar to my soul in England. I wore them when I walked up the steps of St. Paul's cathedral.

They walked me away from the home and family I loved in Pleasant view Ut and into a new home in Rexburg. They were on my feet when I experienced a first kiss under my first shooting star. I wore them to go dam sliding. I wore them to my first college classes, to the library and down a street filled with fallen leaves as the season changed. They walked in snow and over ice as Rexburg turned to a winter wonderland. I wore them to two jobs as I struggled to pay my way through school and survive at home, restricted for the first time in months.

I was wearing them the day I walked into Adam's life and many days of walking hand in hand falling in love. I was wearing them when he told me that he wanted to marry me. I wore them to Disneyland when he surprised me for my birthday. I was wearing them when I walked away from him. I bent over to tie my shoe and looked over from across the security checkpoint and saw him for the last time for several months. I took a deep breath and they walked me to my seat. My shoes walked in New York and Prague before they walked right into a snowy day in Moscow. My toes could feel the snow creep in through holes from two years of wear.

They walked all over Moscow, Estonia, Ukraine, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and France. In France they climbed the Eiffel Tower, in Denmark they snuck off the pavement to walk down to the waters edge and touch "The Little Mermaid" for luck. I was wearing them when I came home and found my family, I ran to them as fast as they could take me. I was in them all summer long as I prepared for my wedding, I wore them at my wedding (hahaha just kidding).

Once again they took me away from my family when I said goodbye and with my new husband stepped into a Uhaul and drove to Vegas. I wore them to jump in a dumpster and search for .5 hour for a gift card I'd thrown away. I wore them Camping with my new in-laws.

It was camping. I looked down at my shoes during that camping trip. Worn to the very last bit of rubber, barely hanging on to decency I decided it was time for these shoes to retire. Looking back I could have let them make a grand exist by tying them together and throwing them skyward to be tangled among the branches of Sequoia National Park. I just laid them on a rock, though about the adventures that we'd been on together. Took some pictures (seriously, I have attachment problems) and left them for good.

This summer while roaming the outlets at Barstow I came upon a pair of shoes. It was difficult at first to recognize them. They were so shiny and blue and perfect. A fresh pair of shoes identical to my own beloved pair who perished in the Mountains of California.

I bought them.