Old Shoes

I am a flea. Nothing, but nothing is more comforting to me than to burrow into piles of old clothing and textiles. I shiver when looking inta a glass case and spying the corner of a tiny remnant. I become hyperactive when faced with the colours, designs and textures of a long forgotten trunk or suitcase.

When I was a little girl I remember finding a box of clothing in a field on the way home from school. It had obviously been sitting for awhile. Long enough to assume some of the textures of the surrounding prairie landscape. It was full of baby clothes. The contents was my childhood equivalent of lottery winnings. Little babies things. Tiny sacques and buntings. Soft embroidered nighties. Yellow and blue fine knit booties and sweaters. Wee smocked bonnets.
Best yet...cracked ivory baby shoes.

Total and complete bliss.

Fiona Parrot is my husband's cousin. She is an anthropologist in London. I curled up with jealousy when told she spent a year doing a study in London and went through the household belongings of dozens of people. She tried to determine what kind of a life people lived by what it was they owned.

Vashti, my step son's partner is an archaeologist. She has studied the belongings of ancient civilizations. She is in the process of determining whether or not there was once a strong and powerful group of prostitutes in Mexico. She dives into underwater caves to find their remnants. I just want to hold her collecting baskets.

My mother has a bottom drawer with objects carefuly wrapped in protective paper. Our things. Her mother's things and things from Ireland and England. My favourite is an old, deeply carved Irish Catholic leather prayer book. It holds pressed flower petals and a handwritten confession from a distraught and hysterical teenager. The upset and illogical teenager had once been my Nana. Her buttoned black baby boots are wrapped in a blue tissue paper.

My father was not this type of gatherer although he loved history. He was horrified and appalled that I would drag such awful things home. He tossed them in the burning can and lit them on fire. He explained about polio and smallpox. Horrible diseases like meningitis and impetago. Baby clothes that belonged to other children carried potential death and awful germs.
This was not illogical. Polio epidemics were still a reality when I was small.

Why else would they be thrown away?

I just thought the family moved and left them for me to find. I stood transfixed as I watched the clothing smolder and start to burn. The flames just illuminated the beauty of the intricate stitches and sent the clothing to heaven for squirming babies.