Jake's Shoes

So, at some point after Christmas Jake realized that he was missing his new dress shoes. If I haven't mentioned it already, Christmas was the blessed birthday of our Lord and also the day I found myself, pregnant and with a cold and a minimum of sleep, as the only conscious adult out of five in a house with seven kids and the person packing about 98% of everything into the van. When others stirred from their places, and I had just hit the point where the van was almost stuffed full, a couple people, Jake being one, noticed the boys' blazers and dress shirts hanging in a closet and thought somehow that in my lone competence I must have overlooked them. Um, no, if I can make sure that every piece of Lego from every new set given was compiled and put in Ziplocs so that each set remained intact and distinct for at least the rest of the first day, and all the dirty laundry was packed and beds were stripped of their sheets and useful toys for keeping kids occupied in the car were placed in the appropriate seats a full hour before boarding, I assure you, I was not "missing" anything--I had taken my dad's offer of leaving behind anything we didn't need right away for them to bring down or us to retrieve during the next visit. It seemed that in the grand scheme of Christmas break, there would be little need for the blazers and the kids would rather have their gifts than their dress shirts.

* * *

This was a fine plan, only it turned out that we never went back to LI during the rest of Break, and then my parents went to visit a friend in Florida during the first week of January--which was when Liam was going to visit a potential high school and needed his blazer. I didn't figure it out until the night before his visit, which was also Liam's birthday, and though Jake and Mark might think that birthdays just involve showing up for dinner and cake (and in Jake's case, even dinner is optional, because what's the big deal about taking a later train on your kid's birthday?), there's actually a lot of planning that goes into the food and cake and presents that Jake thinks appear out of thin air from the Birthday Fairy, so being distracted by all that I didn't notice that the blazer was an issue until fairly late in the day. But sometimes God provides in spite of my resentment and pissy attitude, because Liam's friend's mom had dropped off two suit jackets her sons no longer fit into into over break, and one of them just barely fit Liam. As I was expressing both relief at our good fortune and disbelief that I didn't realize we WOULD need the blazers, Jake mentioned, "Yeah, and i think I left my good shoes at your parents', too."

"Your shoes? The new ones from Lands End that cost an arm and a leg?" I had reluctantly accepted the fact, after Jake went to Macy's and found their shoes even more expensive then LE, that for appropriate business attire that Jake would be wearing daily, it was in fact not unusual that they cost more than all the shoes I've ever bought in our entire marriage. (This is both a reflection on how much good business shoes cost and how infrequently I buy sneakers. The last time I went shopping for them, I was shocked that I couldn't find a decent pair of Adidas shoes for under $25.) And Jake, like the kids, often forgets that things don't get replaced when worn out by magic or, if they do remember that such things usually involve me, that sometimes I actually need a heads-up when, say, Jake's shoes are coming apart at the soles, because I don't do daily checks on every item in the house. In fact, I doubt Jake even thinks to register the state of his shoes when he puts them on each day until he's walking around and realizes that there's a lot more air circulation than one should have in closed-toe shoes. This time, instead of an all-out shoe failure like a few years ago when Jake rolled up some duct tape to hold the bottom of the shoe to his sock while he ran out to Macy's in the city, Jake noticed the decrepit state of his footwear in time to keep the shoes together with glue or something until we got him new shoes, which is progress I had to applaud and reinforce. Which is why i was so proactive in getting his new shoes ordered in a timely fashion even though it was right in the middle of Christmas gift-buying and an economic crisis and all.

"Yeah, I haven't seen them since Christmas. Or my nice black belt, either."

So anyway, by the time my parents got back from Florida later that week, Jake was still walking around in his old shoes. Being the wonderful wife that I am, I did in fact remember to ask my dad just before they came down a week later to keep an eye out for a pair of Jake's shoes. And when they arrived at our house, I asked after the shoes and got a negative from my dad who still promised to look more closely around the house. Jake never thought about his shoes in all this time.

So Wednesday, as Jake was putting on his shoes to go to work, I saw that one of them had no tongue.

"Jake, that shoe has no tongue! Are you still wearing your old shoes?"

"Yeah, I keep forgetting to ask your parents if my shoes are there."

Saying nothing about my almost certain knowledge that the shoes were NOT at my parents' house, I asked, "Do you know for a FACT that they were left there?"

"Well, no."

"And have you looked around THIS house for them, then?"

"I haven't had a chance to yet."

"You haven't had a CHANCE? You can watch clips of Jon Stewart making fun of Obama and read about ancient farm practices before bed, but haven't had a CHANCE to look around for a missing brand-new pair of shoes so that you're not wearing a shoe that's missing it's tongue to work?!?"

"I just keep forgetting, and these shoes have been missing a tongue for two months and no one's noticed, by the way, so it's not like it's making me look bad or anything that I keep wearing them--"

"If it doesn't matter that these shoes are falling apart, why'd we spend the money on the new ones in the first place, then?" Clearly years of living with me have not improved his skills at reasoning and arguing nearly as much as one might think.

"Fine, I'll email your dad tonight and ask if the shoes are there--"

"Which is a lot easier than actually looking around yourSELF--you need to thoroughly check this house as well, and it's YOUR job to remember this stuff, not mine. This is just silly."

Needless to say, he did not look or email my dad that day or night, and of course i felt somewhat responsible because I didn't remind him. Yesterday, no worry about shoes--Jake comes home, takes shoes off, forgets shoes. Me, I don't get to forget things once they're not being used, because if I do, I end up with a situation like I had this morning when Duncan was telling me he wanted his mittens and I could not remember where I put the pair he'd last worn or the unused-but-matched extra stash of mittens in the closet. Did I then go three weeks without doing anything about mittens? No, I began going through the closet to find the mitten stash...

Which is how I came to look inside a plastic CVS bag hanging from one of the coat hooks in the dead center of the closet, which had inside not mittens but a nice pair of black Lands End men's dress shoes, and coiled in one of the shoes, a nice black belt. In the front closet, which is where all the shoes are kept, go figure. Granted, they were hanging up in a bag, not piled on the floor with the two dozen other shoes, but then, to protect the brand-new shoes on the way home from Grandma's they would have been put in a bag, and a thorough search would have included looking in various bags and things whether or not one realized that they were likely to be in a bag. In fact, I seem to have a recollection of Jake heading out the door into snow and slush and telling him there was no way he was going to walk two blocks to the shuttle in that mess in his new shoes, which means they may have been worn after Christmas but put into a bag for the walk home from work and then hung up in the closet by Mr. Forgetful, whose brain then saved him from the trouble of looking for them by assuming that they must be at a house where someone ELSE should look for them....

I think I'm going to hold them ransom. What I'm going to ask for, I'm not sure, but I'm open to suggestions....