Scuffed, pointed toes peek just a few inches from my bootcut jeans. "I bought them when I was pregnant with my firstborn," I said. "That makes them twenty-five years old. I thought they would be my last big purchase ever, figured all my money would be spent on my kids after that. They've been resoled once, at the shoe hospital."
The boots, dark caramel brown and creased from wear, sat unused for months at the bottom of my shoe pile until this past week, when the "Wild West" theme of our fall book fair fundraiser called for an appropriate costume. I bought Wrangler western style shirts, one red and one blue, with pearl snap buttons. A bandanna and a sueded plastic cowboy hat from a party supply store completed the look. It was a hit with the students, who commented daily on my "cowboy clothes".
I've lived in this state for over thirty-six years, and those boots still feel like a costume. Not a huge fan of country music. Don't really know how to two-step or do a boot-scootin' boogie. Rarely does a "y'all" slip from my lips. I'm Texan by residence, not by birth. Two-thirds of my life spent here, and I can't bring myself to call this place "home", though I find thoughts of leaving our house, our neighbors, the lives we've built for ourselves discomforting.
This must be the legacy of being a military BRAT: no matter how comfortable you are, or how long you stay, a place is never really home--but the people and the circumstances are the closest things to home we know.
