The Aunt Marilyn Boots
...a meditation on love and death...
I inherited a pair of winter boots from my Aunt Marilyn when she died in 1987. I still have them. They are a fixture in the household. We call them “the Aunt Marilyn Boots”. Both Mary and I wear them.
They are slip-on winter boots from Quebec. Apparently Quebecers know their winter gear. They don’t mess around. And these things have proved both reliably warm and well-nigh indestructible.
So each winter when the first real snow falls, there they are among the rest of the shoes and boots by the front door. Yes, still. They’re just so darn convenient when heading out into a fresh 6” snowfall whether I’m just taking the compost out or digging a couple of last year’s leeks in the garden to add to a batch of hummus. Which I recently did. They’re also super nice for getting down to the lake for ice skating: easy on / easy off, which is appreciated when the weather is cold and I’d rather be skating than fiddling with bootlaces.
All these praises aside, however, the longevity of these boots feels a little disquieting to me at times. The fact that their original owner died 37 years ago and I’m still huffing around in them winter after winter invites ruminations about mortality, the fragility of human life, and the peculiar circumstances that bring things, and yes, people, —into our lives, and then take them away again.
And that’s all great — and by that I mean huge, stupefyingly great, in fact — so perhaps not surprisingly, it’s all been written about, endlessly.
As far as the boots themselves go in the poetry of their unsung utility, I could borrow from William Carlos Williams to write something along the lines of:
So much depends On the grey winter boots Sitting on the floor By the doorway
When I get a shade maudlin about it, though, I wonder if these boots will eventually outlast me, as they did their original owner. Purchased in the final months of my aunt’s life, the reason they were worth passing along was because they were nice boots that had seen very little wear. How they came to me, I have no idea — maybe Marilyn’s children declined them. If that’s the case, well, let’s just say that there are times when I think they may have been wise to do so. Sometimes I feel like I’m literally walking around in a mobile memorial in these things, like or I’m wearing a nice, comfortable pair of grey winter tombstones.
But the boots fit, so I wear them. I’ve lived long enough to see what happens to people’s things when they die, and some of it stays and a lot of it disappears. Now with well over three decades of service behind them, it is unlikely these boots will find their way next anywhere but to the trash bin.
So, part of me wants to get rid of them right this minute if for no other reason than that they so frequently occasion the thought of other people having to throw out my personal belongings at some point, just as I have had to throw out or distribute, dispose of or incorporate the material stuff of other lives that have ended into my own. I recall going through my mom and dad’s stuff, my in-laws’ stuff, my grandmother’s stuff. Royal Doulton figurines! Tchaikovsky on 78RPM phonograph records! Old maps and puzzles, and (oh my!) Reader’s Digest condensed books! Oh, what’s this? A garden hoe with a hole drilled through the handle to hang it on a nail in the garage. I sanded the handle and then coated it with wax melted into warm vegetable oil. Turned out to be hickory! That was a keeper. Some things I pitched or donated or otherwise let go of, and some I still have and use. But it still feels kinda weird. Apparently I’m a temporary node in a network of merging and diverging streams.
Sometimes I think: Start the housecleaning now! Get rid of things like this. Make space for the new! What the heck!
Thing is, as the character in the plague scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail so famously said, “I’m not dead yet!” I mean, I was literally just out in the snow in these things. They kept my feet warm and dry, once again, and darnit, I’m still grateful for them. Amazingly, I’m still among those walking around. “Doing things,” in quotes. I wonder about that, too, but I’m wearing these boots.
So…
So many scenes, so many camera angles, like a movie I can replay again and again with any number of color filters, or even go B&W for added drama and kind of a film noir effect. Same boots, but new and different layers of meaning, different feeling tones, different thoughts…
And isn’t that life? As The Bard wrote, it’s “a tale told by an idiot,” but he left something out: It gets retold, by still more idiots! Including, apparently, me. Goodness, though. We could experience enlightenment, samadhi, nirvana, or be born again; things remain, often for a surprisingly long period of time. The Persistence of Memory has nothing on the persistence of actual objects. Real, meet surreal. And the beat goes on.
Then again, look at how peppered this essay is with references to cultural icons: the poets Williams, Shakespeare, Monty Python, Dali… so many greats. Although, come to think, it’s probably a sign I’m flailing and floundering in the mysterium tremendum that I’m reaching for such a roster of heroes within the span of a few short paragraphs. To that pantheon I would now add Jean-Paul Sartre, whose novel Nausea features a main character, if I recall correctly, who finds himself staring in a kind of horror at the roots of a chestnut tree. I can relate.
These boots are — again, sort of — my existential roots. They’ve become an iconic representation of Love and Death, as the great existential philosopher Woody Allen expressed so movie-ingly. Especially since, with me here still tap-tap-tapping at my QWERTY keyboard, it was my Aunt Marilyn, perhaps more than anyone else, who encouraged me to write. And that, in the love-and-death movie that I’m now playing in, would be the love part.
Plus, even though I first drafted this essay almost a year ago. just today I wore them while liberating my car from its icy sarcophagus of four inches snow saturated by bouts of rain and then frozen solid as temperatures plunged to 0°F. My feet stayed warm. And that’s love, too.
So, looks to me like love wins, at least for now. Maybe, in the larger sense, it always does. Anyhow, I guess I’ll keep these boots for another winter. It’s just hard to let go of anything this helpful and appreciated. Maybe in the back of my mind I’m also hoping the earth keeps holding onto me for another winter, too, in part for the same reasons. Or even just for grins.
Any reason will do, sometimes. And as for us idiots, well, someone has to tell the tale. This is my contribution.
And, you did tell the tale. Nice!