Fathers – some of them are engaged in their children’s lives, some are enigmas and some are completely missing. My father fell into the enigma category. Try as I might to pry some edges loose I never quite knew what he was thinking or feeling. He was a silent and solitary man rarely given offering an opinion on things.
I found one way to connect with him and that is what the following story is about. He was a neat and tidy man who valued taking care of things. So with that in mind, I am reprising this first story I wrote here almost two years ago. I’ve polished it up and detail the edges – just like my Dad.
SHOES
The small, golden glow radiating from the celluloid eye of the radio dial stared at me from across the room as I sat on a low stool next to my father's chair. It was Sunday evening and the newspapers had been carefully spread in front of him on the floor as he began to lie out his shoes and polishing materials with the precision and care of a surgeon laying out his instruments before an operation. The air was quiet with only a gentle murmur coming from the huge, brown, boxy radio to keep us company.
He was a salesman and taking care of his shoes was an important ritual, one I was allowed to observe. I watched the seasons change on the newspaper - in winter his heavy, brown brogans, serious black wing tips and cordovan slip-ons with a tassel that seemed just a little too dashing. In the summer, shoes the color of cream and tan and the most challenging to care for; black leather, white suede wing-tips with thin soles. I always thought he must possess some special magic to be able to keep the white liquid polish off the black and the black wax from ruining the delicate white suede.
When he began to pull out the laces I knew that was my cue to go to the kitchen and bring him a dish of warm water to wet the laces and moisten the saddle soap - for he would never think of polishing a pair of shoes that hadn't been thoroughly cleaned. He dropped the laces in the water to soak while he arranged his shoes in order and took the appropriate colors from a handmade shoeshine box that he had built when he was in a high school woodworking class. I would be back at my post on the low stool hugging my knees as he fished the laces out of the water, ran them tightly between his thumbnail and index finger then hung them over the left arm of his chair.
He would reach in his pocket for a coin to open the can of saddle soap- a dime worked best to open the old-fashioned can. Since I have grown up the slot in the side of the can has been replaced with a little metal wing-like device that I have never been quite able to accept. A small, soft round-headed brush was used to work the saddle soap into a frothy lather that very much reminded me of him whipping his shaving cream. Slow circular motions were used until he had an even, white foam covering the shoe. Then he'd pick up an old toothbrush to scrub the stitching around the soles. This procedure complete, he would use one of my mother's old terrycloth towels to remove the week's accumulation of soil and disappointment from his rounds.
After completing that task he would sit back in the chair with a nearly inaudible sigh and smoke a cigarette to give his shoes a chance to dry.
There was only silence between us at this time as he wore a slightly weary look - a little bored and restless. I sensed my father was not very comfortable with my five-year old level of conversation so I would pretend to be lost in the radio, but to this day I couldn't tell you a thing that was on during this Sunday evening rite.
Again he would pick up the dime to open the cans of wax, one at a time in order of use. Folding a soft piece of flannel several times he would make slow concentric circles around the inside of the can of wax. Slipping a shoe onto his hand he would begin to work the wax evenly into the leather starting at the toe and working back to the heel. Sometimes he would still be smoking a cigarette and he would tilt his head to one side and squint his eyes to keep out the smoke, but most of the time he would just rest the cigarette on the arm of the wooden chair - the right arm of that chair bore many a scorch mark as a testament to the times he was lost in making slow, lazy circles across his shoes and the left arm was etched with water marks from his drying shoelaces.
As he finished with each color he would entrust me with the chore of putting the lids back on the cans, watching carefully to see that I got them on straight and tight to keep the wax from drying out.
Now it was time for the edges, he would reach into the box for a bottle of pungent smelling, black liquid and using a small fleece-covered dauber his brows would knit in concentration and he would hold his breath as he so meticulously went around the edges of the soles, including the inside edge of the heel, to cover the scratches and wear of a salesman's trail. If he was going to speak to me at all it was usually at this point when he would say something like, "Details are important - people notice the little things." He was proud that he took care of the details.
After carrying the dish of water back to the kitchen I'd race back for the best part. He was in the home stretch now and he seemed to perk up just a little. He would reach into his shoeshine box for his brush of fine bristles and his nappy buffing cloth. Slipping the dull shoe onto his hand and first with the brush, vigorously go over the leather turning the finish bright. The rhythmic scruff-scruff sound of his brushing was the closest I ever heard this quiet man come to making music. By the time he got to the buffing cloth he was ready to entertain me a little for my patient watching and unspoken questions. He would slip on the lace less shoe and prop his foot on the low stool that I gracefully gave up at this point. Holding the cloth strip between his two sturdy, square hands he would go so fast over the shoe that his hands would blur. The bright finish turned glassy before my eyes and I would smile and giggle, as he would make the rag pop and snap.
At this point it was time to return the straightened laces to their proper pairs of shoes. Once again, attention to detail was called for as my father carefully drew the laces through the two bottom holes and made sure the ends were perfectly even before he threaded them through the remaining holes and saw to it that the laces never twisted as they crossed each other. I would help him carry them, one on each hand so as not to bruise the newly waxed shoes, to his bedroom where he would neatly arranged them on the closet floor ready for battle in the coming week.
My reward was the coveted cardboard shirt liners that he saved on the top shelf of his closet. One side was white and made for especially good coloring. He would hand me two or three sheets and if he was feeling especially generous he would give me a piece of tough, strong-tasting black licorice that he kept in the top drawer of his bureau. Sometimes I really hit the jackpot and got the dime that he used to open the cans too.
As I got a little older and started school I would bring my ugly brown leather oxfords to this weekly event and he would transform them too. I don't remember how I talked him into teaching me how to polish shoes, but it must have been a struggle for him to watch my clumsy beginning efforts at his perfected craft. Somehow, I persevered and so did he and we continued for a few more years to share Sunday night.
When I was eight, that Christmas he presented me with my on shoeshine box that he had made, "So I could polish my shoes by myself." I felt a little confused at the two messages. First, that he had so much confidence in my ability that he thought he no longer needed to supervise my work, and second that he wanted to take back his Sunday nights. We never polished shoes together after that Christmas.
I remember, much later when I was a teenager sitting on the floor of my room polishing my proud collection of flats one night and suddenly really missing him. Somewhere in time it had all come unwrapped when the booze and disappointment became too much for him and I couldn't stand to be around the smell of the hatred of his life and see the sadness in his eyes.
I had learned some time before that my Dad had never wanted to be a salesman. As a young man he had dreamed of becoming an architect and the proof of that fact, the many lovingly crafted drawings from his high school classes, lay in a box under the house crumbling and as faded as his dreams.
After high school he had worked as a night bookkeeper in a bank for two years to put away money for college. His father had been an immigrant bricklayer and house builder and my father had wanted to take the family business one step further when the Depression wiped out all that they had. That was when he met my mother and they decided to get married instead. Serious work was needed during the Depression to support a family so he gratefully took what was available.
By the time I was born, fifteen years into their marriage, I imagine any hopes of it ever being any different were long gone; just the quiet resignation of a man's dreams and his destiny going in opposite directions with alcohol to numb the grief.
My confession is this: I am the shoe polisher of my family. My husband gratefully gave this task to me when we were first married many years ago. I don't polish his shoes every week, but I follow the same steps that were burnished into my brain so many Sunday's ago. I guess it's for the connection - the part of me that doesn't want to let go of something that was good between my father and me even if it was for such a short time.
He has been gone a quarter of a century and we never did have much of what could pass for closeness after my early childhood, but sometimes I wonder if he is looking over my shoulder when I am polishing shoes to see if I am paying attention to the details. I am Dad, especially the edges.