These Boots

My google homepage is in Spanish, kinda cool.

Also my word is being fucky and I can’t fit my mouse on the tiny table in my room.

However, it is 50 degrees warmer here than home and this is good.

I am at an all-inclusive resort in Cozumel Mexico. Never done this before.

5 hour delay getting here due to -33 degree weather at home, plus a broken conveyor, lost luggage and oh ya, two planes had a little fender bender and there was flames and stuff right next to us on the tarmac, so ya. We got in late.

I am feeling kinda uncomfortable in my skin here, not sure what to do with myself.

So I am in my room writing and waiting for the rain to pass.

I have dipped my toes in the Caribbean Sea which is a new body of water for me, so that’s good.

He who shall not be named because of bad behavior had a whole bit on the ingratitude of airline passengers “did you fly across the sky like a fucking bird?”

Ya buddy, I did. I refuse to complain. They should have given us a meal for having us sit for almost 4 hours on a plane right before a 4 hour flight. I needed a smoke something fierce by the end of it.

But it is what it is. And even though I was woken up by a screaming child at 8 this morning, I woke up in fucking Mexico, with an ocean 100 feet away.

I have found that as my gratitude grows so does my list of things to be grateful for.

But what about these boots I was talking about?

They have been with me through many airports and on many road trips.

I bought them a fairly cheap place 5 years ago right before I left for Arizona.

First adventure alone, Miss Missy picked me up at the airport and drove me to Joshua Tree to see a fiend from public school, named Joshua.

I had a stopover in North Carolina and met a surfer boy who had a perfect circle of shark teeth scars on his torso. “It wasn’t that big of a shark and he let go as soon as he realized I wasn’t dinner.” I asked if he still surfed, he said “all the time’. A little bit of fear left me then.

After Joshua Tree, we, I should say she, drove 3 hours into Los Angeles. I fell asleep in the car and woke up cranky, cussed out her uncle as though I was possessed by some evil demon. I apologized the next morning and he let me stay. We argued about cantaloupe and we are still friends.

That was the trip where I accidentally swam with dolphins.

The boots went into a box of dirty clothes I shipped home to myself because I bought so much stuff I couldn’t carry all of it.

I have learned to pack better, bought a bigger suitcase, and brought those boots everywhere I have been.

Psychic camp in Cassadega, through the mountains in the Virginia’s. Way out east to that beautiful island. To the hotel room with that beautiful boy. They walked me out of his car and to the most easterly part of my continent and I looked over at the ocean and felt humbled.

And now here.

My first destination wedding, first all-inclusive resort, first time at a new salty body of water, and we know how I love those. So many first and so much brave for a girl who used to overthink pushing on a pull door.

They have conformed to the shape of my feet, almost as good as barefoot.

But they are on their last legs.

I bought a new pair in Florida, these ones lasted 3 years longer than I expected a $50 pair of boots to last.

But I am not excited about them yet. I haven’t put them on past trying them on. They are taller, almost too black, and they don’t hug my ankles the way these ones do. Almost too new.

But I think it’s time to break them in.

Time for new adventures and new things and new boots.

When I was in Newfoundland I had a raggedy old stripper purse that I used for superstitious reasons, the manager saw the safety pins holding it together and suggested I get a new one. “Leave one here and take a new one home”. And he gave me a random good luck peso to put in it. So I did, and I made money, amen.

There’s a shoe tree on highway 48, on the way to the old farm house. Always hated that thing. People pulled over on the side of the road desecrating mama nature and slowing down traffic. Sisterwife took pics of it so I knew where she had been.

I might, weather permitting, take a side trip to ye olde shoe tree, with a hammer and nails, and put the final bit of closure on the last few chapters of my life before I make the 38 hour drive into the new one.

Or I will let them take me home.

I love these boots, all the places they have been with me, all the old fears falling away sharing a smoke with a cutie patootie and his scars outside a strange airport. Lacing them up on a hotel balcony in West Virginia, watching the sun come up, knowing I would be back in flip flops by the end of the day. Taking them off and slipping them back on at so many airports. 4 different addresses, about to be 5.

Those old boots were made for wandering. Maybe these new boots are made for staying.