She bought them at the garage sale of one of her artist-friends for $5.00 about 16 years ago. They were Doc Martins, well worn in, slightly too large for her, but comfy with thick socks. Purple wasn't really her colour, but she liked the subversive discordant yellow laces. They had originally belonged to another artist and she liked the thought that she was maintaining the tradition.
She wore them for quite a while, then threw them in the cupboard and forgot about them.
Life went on, new lives, new jobs - she seemed to be getting somewhere. She thought she was advancing slowly in her new career and applied for a job which she had a good chance of getting.
When she started a project that required some sturdy boots, she remembered the purple Doc Martins in exile in the shoe cupboard. They had lost most of their purple colour but the leather and the laces were still good. They were perfect so she started wearing them again.
She didn't get the new job. The new-person did. She felt gutted, betrayed. She started questioning where she thought she had been going, questioned her own integrity. It was difficult to talk to people about it because it just whined of bitter and ungracious defeat. But it was a hard blow which left her reeling and hollow.
Suddenly the new-person was everywhere in her life - walking confidently in their new-workplace, cup of coffee in hand. She didn't want to dislike this person but she didn't want them there, didn't want them anywhere near her, not for a while at least - until she was over the shock. But everyone was talking like the new-person was the answer to everything, an answer they couldn't get from her.
At the river one day with her 2 small dogs she noticed that one of them seemed to be getting swept away in the channel. With no thought for the purple-boots she waded in to rescue the dog. They oozed water as she came back to the beach with the bedraggled dog. She took them off, took them home, diligently washed them in fresh water and left them on a piece of corrugated iron in the hot sun. As she drove away one day she caught sight of them on the hot tin and remembered with a sudden jolt - the purple-boots had once belonged to the new-person. She knew because her artist-friend had told her. She didn't know the new-person, but those purple-boots had carried them into her life.
It was an overcast day when, with a tinge of sadness and much resolve, she drove the purple-boots out to the granite coast, to the deepest ocean she could find.
And she threw them into the deep crevasse.
old purple-boots & the new-person
