25th
When I was Alex’s age, I would have killed for a pair of shoes just like my dad’s.
But that wasn’t the way things worked back then. So I’d drift into my parents’ room on summer days while dad was at work. He had like five pairs of shoes and it boggled my mind to imagine having so many options, so many needs. My favorites were his gray, men’s size 10.5 New Balance running shoes, and I remember clopping around his bedroom in them, my own feet shoved all the way up into the toes, barely filling a third of the space in those shoes. Men’s shoes. I couldn’t imagine ever being that big.
Alex may never experience the wonder of discovering metaphor in his quest to imagine wearing his father’s shoes. And maybe that means we’ve lost something. But, damn, what I wouldn’t give to have a photo like this from my own childhood.
