My Momma and Ole Sneakers

I was sitting downstairs at the side of the building in the warm South Beach morning sun washing a pair of sneakers. I went through the long-unused technique of stripping the laces, soaking them in the bleach-and-soap-filled-bucket, and letting one sneaker soak in the solution while I scrubbed the other. Familiar images, and the sentiments such images evoke, tickled my consciousness, and I offered a mental wager to anyone listening to my imaginary call: "I bet you I can get these sneakers whiter than any washing machine you could find." No imaginary character took the bet, but I got to washing as though someone had.

Sitting there in that old rickety backyard chair, with suds flying from the scrub brush and the smell of bleach strong in my nostrils, I remembered those boyhood days when a washing machine wasn't even something the neighbors had...like TV. Just like those days, I could hardly tell scuffmarks from dirt marks, and I knew that no amount of bleach and friction could fully return these court warriors to their youthful glory days.

Funny thing, I remember being ashamed that we couldn't have new things like other kids. Other kids didn't seem to have to wash their sneakers until the scrub brush bristles pricked your fingers inside the shoe you were scrubbing. Their sneakers didn't seem to have that "not-quite-right" look that my sneakers got after they had been washed and the scuffmarks and diehard stains were only somewhat masked by shoe whitener. No, their fingers didn't seem to have the telltale white smudges mine had after I had just finished tying my shoelaces...I wonder if they ever made smudge-proof shoe whitener.

Anyway, I now live in the land of plenty, in the realm of quick and easy. These days when sneakers get too dirty we throw 'em in the washing machine. Heck, if throwing them in the machine is too much trouble we throw 'em out and just buy another pair. But in days past, on our little island, there weren't washing machines in my neighborhood. We couldn't just throw the dirty sneakers in the machine, and we certainly didn't just throw things out when they got too dirty. Nope, we grabbed the bucket, the soap and the brush and got bizzzy. We got 'em clean or we scrubbed 'em some more...and some more if necessary.

As I scrubbed those old sneakers, with a melancholy longing for those less complicated times, my thoughts turned to Momma. Without her, things would have just stayed dirty. "Boy, yuh betta wash dem sneakers, cause yuh ain going to school wit no dirty shoes," she would say. I would moan, groan, and with suds flying, take out my disgruntled frustration on the sneakers...Come to think of it, attitude was probably more responsible for those sneakers being clean than the soap and bleach with which I scrubbed them. Today, as I washed my polyeurethane-soled, leather-uppered, specially padded, hi-tech designer "sport shoes," very distant relations of the canvas and plastic or rubber sneakers I wore as a boy, I smiled proudly. The image of my Momma, complete with her idiosyncratic gestures and "mother's looks," kindled a warm glow that coursed through me, and made the once dreaded task a choice chore. As it so often does these days, my momma's image induced reminisces of boyhood lessons.

I remembered the two pair of "short pants" that I had for school, wearing them home everyday just as dirty on return as they had been clean when I left that morning. Being dirty on the way home from school must have been like a badge of honor or something for us schoolboys. Those shorts eventually reached the point where "clean" was just a distant goal for my mother's strong fingers on the washboard. I am sure I must have even complained on more than one occasion that they didn't look clean despite her earnest scrubbing and ironing.

Third-degree questioning as to, "How in de worl dem pants geh so dutty boy?" was a daily ritual my Mom and I went through. We both knew our lines, and played our parts to the "T." But one day somebody rewrote the script and didn't tell yours truly. That morning I went to get dressed for school, and laid out in their usual spot were my school clothes...only they were the same clothes that I had worn the day before...and I mean exactly the same! Yesterday's stains, dirt and aroma greeted me as I disbelievingly and gingerly, with two fingers, picked up my daily gear. "Ah know she doan expeck me tuh wear dees cloes," I could hear myself say incredulously. "Mommy, wha happen tuh dees cloes?" I must have cried. "Well yuh wan tuh wear dutty clothes home from school, yuh might as well wear dem tuh school jes so. I ain workin my fingers tuh de bone so you could walk de street like yuh ain hah no parents," she must have replied, or something to that effect. I'm sure we went around for a while on whether or not I was going to go to school at all that day, with me finally acquiescing when she threatened "the belt."

The shame I'm sure I felt as I donned those clothes, has fled from my "emotional" memory, but images of me holding my book bag in strategic positions all the way to school, and throughout most of the day, remain. I'm sure I must have waited until the other boys' uniforms were in a similar state before I dropped my camouflage. I know that I dirtied my clothes after that day, but I'm also sure that I took as much care as any ten-year-old ever did to keep his clothes clean.

But I have digressed, haven't I? It's just that today as I sat downstairs scrubbing those old sneakers, those times that belong to just Ma and me begged for the telling. Now that I once again can't really afford to buy a new pair of sneaks, and the washing machine just can't do the job, I find myself smiling and singing my mom's praises. Funny how years later we thank moms for the same things we cursed them for when we knew even less than we know now. Today, I'm not ashamed that I can't afford new sneakers, and that others will be able to tell that I had to scrub my footwear by hand. Today, these old, clean sneakers will be my badge of honor as my dirty "short pants" once were. They will be my tribute to the most special of ladies, the most heroic of heroes: my mom.