~Simply joy 4~ Boots.

Daddy's boots. They were tall worn out things with holes in the toes and dirt that never quite came off.  Reeking with the scent of hard work, and some sweat too, these boots were well used.

Daddy had bought them back in the day before he and Mamma were married and he was trying to get her attention. Mamma often told us that story. Of how daddy had spent half of his spending money for the Summer on those boots. He had got them at the most elite store in town, where a man sized your foot and wrapped them up in a fancy red box with crackling tissue paper. Her eyes glowing and her cheeks red, Mamma would laugh as she told us how proud and stylish daddy felt with those leather kicks on his scrawny feet. She remembered the Sunday after he purchased them, he walked into church with a silly grin on his sunburned face, strutting his long skinny legs down the aisle to show off his feet. He had stopped at Mammas pew and tipped his hat, just in case she hadn't noticed him and his new boots when he first came in.

I smile as I clean out my parents shop and find those boots. I turn them over in my hand, noting all the scuffs and stains, each with a story attached to them. I try to picture them as they were when Daddy first bought them. Funny how something as silly as these boots could hold so many memories. But it's time to part with them.

Who knows, maybe I'll buy Daddy a new pair of boots for Christmas this year, and maybe someday there will be another funny story attached to them. But something tells me that this first pair will always be his best.