Boots

In Texas, boots are as fundamental as cold beer and BBQ, Bluebonnets in Spring and Friday Night Football. The best thing about it, you do not have to be a rootin tootin, tobacco spittin, small town livin, Texan, to be able to wear them, freely as you choose. I have been in meetings with board members and business owners, all wearing boots. Typically, the fancier the boots, the less opportunity they are to be subject to outdoor conditions. I have worked on both sides of this line and I was just as prideful with the old, dusty boots, as I was with shiny new boots that never made it out of an office building.

I received my first pair of boots (Justin Ropers) when I was 4. I wanted to wear boots, just like my dad. Also, I wanted to be a cowboy. I slipped on those boots for the first time and man, I was really something, so I thought. I didn’t re-visit this idea until many years later, still thinking I was really something. Ignorance is bliss.

I moved from childhood into adulthood, no closer to being a cowboy than when I received that first pair of boots. I wore them anyway. I gave up on the cowboy lifestyle but kept the boots and the pride. My steps now covered my father’s tracks. Now, there are two little feet following the path I’m walking.

I had been mourning the death of my ability to wear boots since 2016. I could no longer handle the weight, and I could not seem to walk 20 yards, or less, without twisting my ankle. “It’s temporary” I surmised. At the time, I was not capable of unravelling the ignorance, even though the bliss I felt at age 4 had been long gone. When I was diagnosed in 2011 with Multiple Sclerosis, boots were far from any thought I was having. They had their time for front and center thinking during the ‘stroke era’.

Worse than it sounds, the ‘stroke era,’ a time of rapid progression from M.S, plus, things that happen when you have a stroke. It’s hard to tell which caused what.

Devastating times will reveal truth, more than I could handle at the time. But, as expected, Jamie didn’t reveal any colors that were not already showing. Before this era, she was the one I looked up to and wanted to learn from. She has innate qualities that I was fascinated with but had never experienced. She seemed to have every great quality that I lacked. Over time, I learned that courage and perseverance are traits we share. “To whom my heart trusts” is now a statement I can relate to and have understood to the deepest part of me. Sinners have shame, the righteous have life eternal, and I have Jamie, to leave everlasting marks on my soul (or something like it).

Swimming in the summer, also a fundamental of being a Texan, was something I enjoyed. At age 9, I found myself underneath a pool raft that seemed to take up all real estate that pool had to offer. I went left and right, repeatedly. Then sat underneath it, staring through my goggles, pleading for mercy, then giving it one more try. The anxiety I felt cannot be described. Turns out, it can be duplicated. Early thirties, rapid progressing M.S, Stroke, kids reaching an age where they need their father more than ever, and a brand-new bride that was still unpacking all the ‘baggage’ I very necessarily dropped at her feet. Escaping the bottom and once again taking a deep breath was not a thing to take for granted, either time. Just like the battle with the pool raft, “I lived to die another day.”

Others always have amazing stories about the ‘joy in the journey’ and found ‘purpose’ that pushes them forward, propelling them onto a new path and ultimately, a new ‘journey.’ Their transformation looks much different than mine. I cannot say I felt much joy with my ‘journey,’ and I can’t say I feel I have a ‘purpose’ to expand upon, after outliving those devastating times. MS just seems to at times, blind you to blessings to be counted. I just did what I could, day to day, and stoically nestled myself into Darwinian theory. Either I would make it, or I wouldn’t.

Post ‘stroke era’ has had its own smaller scale ‘devastations.’ It has also had some larger scale ‘blessings.’ I am now on the first medicine made for the progressive MSer. Between the infusions and my stubbornness, I have maintained a certain amount of independence, that at one point, seemed impossible to retain. I have a plethora of canes and a walker that never strays far from me, but I do not have a wheelchair, on my list of resources. One day, it will take the place of the fingerprints I leave on our hallway wall, to catch my balance. For now, I arrive behind a rolling walker, in style, albeit at a snail’s pace.

The longer I live, the more lives it seems I’ve lived. Ive seen the death of a young naive man, a man hungry to be heard, a man hungry to be seen, an independent man, a man stuck in ‘gender roles,’ a man who is nothing without his boots, and countless other deaths I have mourned in private. Ive often wondered what keeps a person from giving up, when life has you pinned down, with its boots on your neck. Having experienced it firsthand, I am no closer to an answer that brings any comfort. Even at the times I was scraping bottom, my thoughts, “I’m still breathing, life has not slowed down to wait for me, giving up will only keep me in this abysmal place, get your shit together and press on.” Maybe this is the only answer, the same one used by countless others, in similar positions. It seems Heaven and Hell are experienced in the flesh and blood. Sometimes you find yourself in the depths of Hells abyss, Heaven, awaiting your next choice, say “Uncle” or find ‘a deeper kind of strong.’

After life’s humbling experiences, I came to a simple understanding. I am not ‘something’ because of boots, because of business or social status, not even because I chose to keep going, when quitting was a tempting choice. These are merely confidence boosters to help keep us moving forward, not, something to increase vanity and ego. I do not know of an exact time when I shed the idea that I was ‘something,’ Seems a lifetime ago. I have tried to give those boots away at least a dozen times, with no luck. I no longer make visits to their shelf in the garage, to make sure they still fit or to take a deep breath of broken in leather, envisioning the next time I’m able to wear them. I am officially, ‘nothing.’ My reward, ‘breaking the cycle’ for my son, who has zero interest in boots, being something he is not or anything along the lines of simplemindedness. But, still finds value in following his father’s footsteps.