Panic

Bob has always used a shoe horn.
Donning sneakers, work, dress shoes.
Mostly, it was a small metal gadget.
Sometimes plastic.
But more metal than plastic since
plastics often snap in half.
Leaving the shoe horn user without a way to ease heel into shoe.
But those three-and-a-half inchers also require bending down.
All of which is fine when the body, young and supple.
What happens when a person ages?
When hunching over, not only a chore, but could lead to devastating consequences?
Like getting stuck with the chin beside the toes?
The spine collapsed?
Well, these days, everything has a solution.
You can purchase shoe horns thirty-one inches long!
Right on Amazon!
You can stand and put on shoes!
What a novelty!
A lifesaver!
So, extra-long shoe horns appeared in every room of the house.
Plastics of blue, red, green.
What color would you like? he’d ask me.
Long metal ones, again, much sturdier.
It seemed as if Bob would never be without a horn to guide his foot.
Of course, when traveling by plane, he’d have to pack smaller ones.
But during pandemic days, driving our only mode of transport.
The upside, he could take a giant shoe horn.
Occupying a space in the back of the Volvo X90.
On this last trip to Stowe, in fact, he brought a blue plastic one.
Since we traveled to and from hotel to visit family, Bob had to take his appliance back and forth.
Otherwise, how would he accomplish the off and on task of leaving shoes at the door?
Roaming the house in socks?
Escapades with the blue stick abounded.
On our first day visiting,
he forgot the horn at the hotel.
Standing at the door until given a magnanimous dispensation.
Permission to climb the stairs with shoes on to bid grandkids goodnight.
Another time, he worried he’d leave his horn at the family home, forget to take it back to the hotel.
Confiding that if he forgot it, he’d not be able to change into trousers from shorts.
Once shoes  off, he’d be marooned in stockinged feet, unable to drive.
And finally, Ezra, three, took great delight in swashbuckling with his grandpop’s sword-like shoe horn.
So, at one point in his fanciful play,
the thing disappeared entirely.
Initiating panic, and an urgent search.
Who ever thought shoe horns could occasion such attachment?
And to be sure, I never paid much attention, till they grew in size and number.
So, like all stories, this tale has a moral,
simple, sweet, sage and neat.
When traveling, take two shoe horns.
After all, you have two feet!

Lynn Benjamin
August 31, 2021