The Shoes

Tennis shoes are not a big deal.  They aren’t supposed to be, but we do live in them. They define us.  They tell the world who we are.  Some people wear pumas and to me, this says “I have style and money”.  Adidas say to me, I have style and I work out, but not really.  Nike says, I workout, period, all the time.  Converse Chuck Taylors have always spoken to me, personally. I love them, I live in them, I have six pairs of them.  Converse say to me, I have style but I’m not gonna blow all my money on a pair of shoes. As Isabelle Allende mentions in her novel, Paula, that when you are in your 20’s poverty is fashionable, and sadly, I’ve never grown up, I still like looking poor. Converse are comfortable, like barefoot comfortable.  I am wearing my black ones as I write this. I have two pairs of black, some crazy purple all-stars, brown high-tops and a pair of red ones for special occasions.  When I had my son, I did the most natural thing a Converse-lovin’ mama would do, I bought him a tiny pair of black ones and I put them on him the first chance I got, which turned out to be a disaster.  He had no interest , screaming and yanking them off, discarded to a closet, I later gave them to friends with kids less stubborn than mine.  I tried for years, suggesting different styles, commenting on their coolness and noting those people he admired who wore them.

In his 10^th year of life on earth he decided that he wanted to learn how to play the drums. Specifically, he wanted to take the School of Rock summer camp.  We live for music. Dad is a drummer, we met at the infamous Electric Lounge, spending years attending every live music show we could get to, nightly.  We even worked in bars to get our fix even cheaper. Our ideal date night is to head out, in a cab, sucking down five-hour energy drinks to see one of our local faves from years gone by, The Pocketfishermen or maybe The Hickoids.  Alternatively, you might find us sipping beers or enjoying a bottle of wine while happily dissecting an old album from our youth, ZZ Top, Adam Ant, The Clash or maybe The James Gang.   When Jake reached out expressing his desire to play, well I was ecstatic.  He wanted to play drums, yummy, drummers are my personal weakness.  I always dreamed of playing the drums but instead I married a drummer, close enough.  I could already see it, my son, Jake, a hard-rockin’, tattoed, bad-ass drummer, going on tour with some mid-grade band, barely scrapping by, living at home when he was not touring, eating our groceries, bumming money, wait, well, let’s slow down!  We did not hesitate, but headed directly to the School of Rock, welcomed by tattooed, rock-n-roll, friendly types. I was dreaming, I was delirious and like any good mother, I pulled out the credit card and coughed up the $450 for one week of camp.  Damnit, my son was going to be a rock-n-roll star!  Next stop, fashion, because all great rockers know how to dress and when all else fails, black on black always works.  My credit card was burning.

He announced he wanted cool black t-shirts, done, easy.  Target men’s department has a slew of cool band t-shirts.  Then, he said….wait for it….that he wanted to DESIGN his own converse high-tops. Babe, the sky, the fucking sky, the damned cosmos is the limit, whatever you want my sweet beautiful  son because I know that these hightops and your summer band camp are going to come back ten-fold in tattoos and rock and roll.  You are going to fulfill all my fucking dreams.  Am I confused?  I mean when I was 18, this was my dream and because of my lack of maturity, I am not able to think like a reasonable mother.  Some moms wish for suits and ties, a home in the burbs, a good wife and a couple of kids, the 401K and insurance included. Here, I am gunnin’ for sex, drugs and rock-n-roll, all wrapped up in a summer camp and converse tennis shoes.  I was losing perspective but I wasn’t aware of it yet. 

Back at home we sit down at the mac and get busy, logging into Converse, I am excited, I am panting, I may have stopped breathing.  He begins his process of picking out the high-top, my senses think low might be better but I’m not going to interrupt this awesomeness.  He begins, picking blue, with purple outline, purple and blue paint splatters on the toe-tip, light blue stars, dark blue lining, aqua inner lining, I’m smiling and uh-huhing, what do I know?  I mean this look is total 1980’s and I’m thinking it is coming back, right?  I can see these shoes on David Lee Roth or the drummer from Def Leppard or maybe one of the guys from Duran Duran. Did wear high-tops?  No, but The Bay City Rollers did. My beautiful, artistic son knows what he wants and who am I to point out that this design is wild and crazy and intense and not….exactly…rock-n-roll 2012, maybe a little new wave 1983.  This crazy color combo is surely hip for the youngsters. It never, ever, ever occurred to me that this gorgeous boy, with his golden surfer locks, amazing personality, straight A’s, viper wit, nerdy dungeons and dragon creativity and intense ability to warp the English vernacular to fit his every moment of emotional expression was suffering from a legacy of colorblindness that would simultaneously create the craziest yet mildly unwearable converse ever.

We stared at them for a while, quiet.  “Do you like them?”, I said.  “Yes”, he said.  Well then, let’s do this.  I paid for them.  Another $115 bucks, this rock-n-roll lifestyle was expensive but totally worth it.  A few weeks later they arrived, a delightful smattering of 1983 throwbacks. I would have loved them when I was 17.  I’m sure I even tried to create a pair using powdered dye.  Jake was hesitant.  He had not meant to have a purple outline around the base, he didn’t know that the various blues didn’t match, yes, the aqua inner liner was intentional (whew), but he hadn’t realized there was also an issue with white and off-white canvas clashing.  We tried to toughen them up with some black shoe-strings.

He was hesitant to wear them but he did, every day of camp, and I really thought they were beautiful.  He was the enigmatic cool, recreated cool, one of a kind cool.  But, at the end of the week, the shoes were discarded into the closet, never to be worn again, a constant reminder to me, that for a moment, he almost joined my converse cult. 

Maybe he would have never known if I hadn’t asked him, so sweetly, if he just really grooved on purple.  Maybe if I had never brought up the variating blues, asking him if he had meant to do it, he would have never cared.  He still plays the drums but not with that ecstatic fever I had hoped for and I’m thinking he is going to be a graphic designer or cartoonist, slightly more stable, less drugs for sure.  But there are the shoes, those shoes, winking at me every time I put away his clothes, reminding me that they are a size 9, my size. So, I picked them up and tossed them into my pile of converse.  I’m not getting rid of them, I’m keeping them, a symbol of that brief moment of creativity and imagination when I knew for sure that my son would be a rock-n-roll star, wanted to be one. I’ll figure out the perfect time to wear them.  They aren’t my style, yet.  Later, when I’m 70 or 80 I’ll take a cruise around the block in them, maybe bang on the drums in the garage, or if I’ve landed on bad times and I find myself pushing my belongings in a grocery cart, living in a box, my last act of defiance will be to pull on those damned converse.  Bury me in them, I’ll scream.  And Jake, well, Jake is back to his running shoes and his sweatshorts.  Just a normal kid, with a crazy mom, and that’s o.k.