Shoe Shine

   My in-laws moved out of their condo in Wellesley, shipping out to California the things they wanted most, or at least the things their new place would hold.  What they left behind:  dishes, pots and pans, enough wine glasses to host a good-sized reception, several bottles of vodka from Russia – gifts from visiting physicists, a fishing rod that breaks down into several pieces and fits inside a metal tube with a sturdy screw-cap and shoulder strap, sheets and blankets, clothes, cleaning supplies, extra light bulbs, an old vacuum cleaner, sake dispensers, a cane my father-in-law should be using but won’t, glass coffee tables, wooden end tables, two sofas, a dining room table and chairs, more dishes, more cleaning supplies, more glasses, a frozen pepperoni pizza, two frozen dinners of macaroni and cheese, a bottle of Budweiser, several bottles of Boylan’s root beer, many plastic bottles of water long past their use-by dates, a wooden box with my father-in-law’s shoe polish supplies, and so on, and so on.

We are keeping some of these things, which will come in handy.  Like the sofas and dining room set, which are an upgrade for the basement/poker room.  And the root beer.  And the dishes and pots and pans, which the girls can use when they get those first apartments.  And, I decided on a whim, the box of shoe polish supplies.  

My father used to shine his shoes.  Like a lot of things, he taught his boys how to do it.  I can’t recall the last time I shined my shoes.  The style of black loafers I wore for years seemed to hold a shine good enough until the shoes wore out.  Now I’ve got some lace-up shoes that seemed scuffed within days after I bought them.  And so, this past Sunday afternoon, I pulled out my father-in-law’s wooden box of supplies, popped open an old tin of black shoe polish, and went at it – pulling one of the old socks over my hand, working my fingertips into the dried polish until it started to feel like firm butter, rubbing it onto my shoes, then letting them sit for a little while before buffing them with a clean rag.  A quick little satisfying job.    

I’ll keep the box of shoe polish.  I’m making my way through the vodka.  Maybe one day I’ll even catch a fish with that old pole.  These things are meant to be used.   

The day after I polished my shoes -- not coincidentally -- I left on a quick business trip to southern California, including meetings in Gardena and Anaheim.  Gardena is where my wife’s grandparents lived.  I met the grandmother once -- still living in Gardena, I think -- after we got engaged.  She was old, very old, and had reverted to speaking very little English by that time.  She pressed my hand and kept saying, “I’m so glad.  I’m so glad.”  Happy that her little granddaughter had found a husband. 

   That was twenty-five years ago.  My wife’s grandmother is long gone.  My wife’s father is eighty-eight now and will, we think, be gone before too long.  It seems like a good thing that on my brief return to Gardena, I had a little of his polish on my shoes.