Repairing Our Shoes

Repairing Our Shoes

Repairing Our Shoes

1

For many years
after arriving in Australia
my father repaired our shoes himself—
partly as a way of saving money
and partly for reasons
I didn’t understand.

2

From the hardware store
he’d buy materials—
nails, soles, glue, twine,
needle, awl, steel tips shaped
like crescent moons—
a cast-iron shoe-last
that resembled a clawed hand
and could have been a relic
dug out of the earth.

3

On Saturdays when he didn’t
go to work, he’d sit
at his bench in the garage
and repair our shoes
which such concentration
it was hard not to notice—
even when he stopped to “roll his own”
and pat the dog beside him.

I knew he’d been a farmer
and slaughterman from hearing
my parents talk;
but this skill for repairing shoes
was never discussed
and I never asked questions
about where he’d learnt the trade—
even when he stopped doing it
and his tools were cleaned and put away.

4

I no longer watched
the careful trimming
of leather and rubber soles—
no longer heard the tap-tapping sound
of a hammer on small nails;
no longer watched honey-coloured glue
poured from a small thick-glass bottle
like a medication.

Perhaps shoes became cheaper
to buy or have repaired
professionally—
or he believed we deserved better
than what his ageing hands could repair.
He stepped back from it
as if it never happened.

5

Today, all that remains
of those tools is that shoe-last
stored in my garage, unbroken—
still looking like a prehistoric relic,
outliving those early years.