Sometimes It's the Little Things

Sometimes it's the little things that get to me.  Everyday things that you wouldn't think would mean anything, that you would pass by without a second glance, that knock the wind out of me and bring me to my knees.

Today it was my dad's shoe brush.  An old, wooden handled, well-worn, hog bristle brush that I can't get rid of.

I took it when we cleaned out his house after he died.  It lived in a red wooly mitt along with a well-worn and deeply stained toothbrush, strips of old tee shirts, and various shades of black, brown, and ox blood shoe polish.  Ox blood.  I always found that curiously morbid and pictured bowls of blood being reduced into shoe polish and deposited in metal cans and ending up on the end of that toothbrush as my dad slathered it on his shoes of an evening.  That wooly red bag of shoe care sat in the floor of the right side of my dad's closet.  Sat there for as long as I remember, coming out once in awhile when my dad polished his wing tips.

I was always excited when Dad would get out his shoe kit.  I loved watching him polish his shoes.  He'd twist the top of the Kiwi can so that the lid popped off and then he'd take that toothbrush and swirl it around in the polish.  The toothbrush allowed him to get in every nook and cranny of the shoes where he would clean off the dirt and scuffs.  Then he would set the shoes on a newspaper on the hearth to rest for a bit before he got out the brush.

Once the polish had had a chance to soak in, Dad would put his hand up in the shoe, with the palm of his hand against the inside bottom of the shoe and begin brushing.  SWOOSH, swoosh, SWOOSH, swoosh, SWOOSH, swoosh.  I can hear the brush as it went back and forth against the leather.  SWOOSH, swoosh.  Back and forth until Dad was satisfied the shoes had been brushed clean.  Then he would take a strip of old tee shirt and polish the shoes to a high gloss.  Usually he'd let me put my hand inside the mitt, which he rarely used, and "help."  I was always disappointed that the inside of that polyester wool wasn't soft at all, but I loved to smooth around the curves of Dad's shoes and watch them glow.

By the time my dad had moved three years ago, it had been a long time since he had polished his shoes.  It had been a long time since he had worn wing tips with any regularity.  He was mostly a tennis shoe guy by then.  Same pair in various stages of wear sat in his closet and on the floor of the garage, but the wing tips had fallen dusty under the bed, and he rarely got them out anymore.

Still, we packed the polishing kit and moved it with him, and put it on the floor of his new closet, where it sat, unused, until he died.  Then when we were packing up, I took the brush.  The red wool bag was in a terrible state of disrepair, and the toothbrush was falling apart.  The cans of polish had long since dried up, but the brush was still in tact, a rich patina on the handle from so many polishes.  I put it in my utility closet where it sat until today, when I saw it again, and traveled back 40 years in time to my family room floor.

SWOOSH, swoosh, SWOOSH, swoosh, SWOOSH, swoosh...