It All Started With the Shoes

My son says it all started with the shoes. No one in this industrialized nation has just one pair. Even without going to the Imelda Marcos extreme (ex-wife of Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marco, rumored – No, they actually COUNTED somewhere between 1000-3000 pairs left behind when she fled the country. Why the confusion then? So many people were trying them on when the palace was stormed that the salespeople were overwhelmed), everyone in snow country, where I was from, has more than one pair. I have four different pairs of ski boots, fer cryin’ out loud, and then in March 2020 they became useless.

In snow country you could count in decades the need for walking or running shoes if you were of a certain age. Creeping from the disabled parking space to the entry at Safeway, you would die many times over before wearing out a pair of walking shoes. Then in March 2020, shoes took on a whole new significance. Ski areas were closed down; and ice rinks; and bowling alleys; and virtually every form of indoor and outdoor activity that suddenly risked loss of life. Winter weather was still upon us so bicycling on ice was a poor option. Only the very young and restless took to swimming outdoors; if you could even get to the outdoor pool when everything was in lockdown. Sure, drive… somewhere! But where? And why? What would you do when you arrived? Wave through the window at the dying in a senior living facility? How awful! Almost as bad as being trapped on the other side of the window.

The young world became lost for a time and everyone went back to the old one: walking upright at whatever pace you could maintain. Which meant shoes suddenly became really important. They had to fit. And deal with uncertain footing conditions. You had to learn all over again how to tie the laces, a practice some of us never mastered the first time. But it was walk or die! Moving was keeping us alive and dodging the capricious and continually changing virus. Walking kept our flagging hearts and spirits going for one more day.

So out came the “running” shoes, day after day, up and down the now-mostly deserted roadways. Week after week, month after month, until they appeared to be wearing out. But how would we know for sure? I had lost more pairs of running shoes moving from one tenement to another than worn any out. What did worn out shoes look like? I had bought a pair of Hokkas years before (big, soft cushiony, choice) and they still looked the same on the bottom. The uppers were synthetic and indestructible. After a solid year of walking first for an hour and then longer sometimes, every day, maybe I needed a new pair? I didn’t know. Walking in worn out shoes could be dangerous; everything else  was still dangerous – even in March of 2021.

The kind and brave salespeople had invented curb service for shoe sales, like everything else. They brought out several pairs that I tried on outdoors, wearing a mask or maybe two, and chose new Hokkas with the same soft, puffy soles, perfect for easing the stress on aging joints. Off I went, returning, over time, to a newly youthful world, now hardened to a great degree by the first pandemic in generations.

While in 2020, we had little or no choice which path to take when so many were closed off, now there were options. It brings to mind the famous poem by Robert Frost. If there is one thing old people have learned in the past few years is to continue to look at the options and make choices, and perhaps the best ones are still being guided by Frost’s words and spirit:

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –

I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”