Yves,

I was about to walk to the bank in your shoes, when my next-door neighbor’s roommate stopped me.  I suppose that technically makes him my next-door neighbor too, but we had never spoken. He told me that his roommate, Victor, died yesterday in a car crash.  Victor and I always managed to have long, rambling, bare-your-soul conversations in the parking lot.  We talked earnestly about our ambitions and how close (or far) our daily lives measured up.

Victor’s roommate continued to tell me that Victor was on his way to his girlfriend’s house.  Somebody (I think it was the other driver) was fumbling with a mattress in the back.  In the ER they had to amputate his legs.  He still died on the operating table from blood loss.

I decided to skip my banking errand and go on a hike instead.  Even though we were on a first name basis, my relationship with Victor never moved beyond chance encounters in the parking lot.  There were several offers to have dinner sometime, or hangout in some pre-planned way.  But I never made the effort to follow through.  Truthfully, our conversations always made me feel a little uneasy.  Now I think I feel a little bit guilty, but that might be too simple a description.

I didn’t really paid attention to how your shoes feel or where I’m going. They’re really pretty comfortable, just a hair too big. At this point the tense, humid air turned into fat widely spaced raindrops. I thought about turning around but I remembered that there was a magnificent black berry bramble up ahead on the trail. More than anything, at that moment I wanted to pick blackberries. I think the news of Victor’s death made me feel very isolated. Victor always seemed a little lonely. I couldn’t shake the image of him dying alone with no legs. I wanted to pick blackberries to combat that.

I hadn’t picked blackberries since I was very small on Long Island with my grandparents. They were there to hold back the really thorny branches so that I could pick all of the good berries. I still had moments of unreasonable panic, when I picked blackberries that had already been discovered by little black ants. Normally most insects don’t bother me, but during those moments they were terrifying. Not that I thought of it at the time, but those Dali ants were a great choice of symbol. I didn’t plan to pick blackberries when I left the house and, when I started picking blackberries, I didn’t mean to pick more than I could eat. But picking blackberries became the perfect project for me. Each black berry presented its own satisfying little puzzle: locating it, deciding if it was ripe enough, and planning the path with the fewest thorns between it and my hand. I walked home feeling accomplished, tenderly clutching my little baggie of blackberries, and thinking about Victor.

Thank you for the opportunity to walk a mile in your shoes.

 

Sincerely,
Sara, shoe borrower