pigeon

the shoe full of bills

When I lived in Seattle, I was lonely a lot of the time, and sometimes sad, not infrequently scared, and sort of lost.

It’s a long, empty way out there, for a midwestern boy far more attuned to family and dependent on basic, loving, primate proximity than he ever had realized or could have predicted. It’s odd that that’s where the memory of the shoe full of bills took me though, because upon further reflection and inspection of past journal entries, I realize I was never in Seattle for any of my birthdays, so this couldn’t have happened there.

Therefore I’m guessing it must have happened in Milwaukee. Let’s say it was my 25th birthday then, although who knows. 🤷 But I did bring the loneliness with me; although I went to the “great place on a Great Lake” for someone and indirectly with someone, nevertheless I dragged the loneliness all the way back across the jagged plains, trailing it behind me like a long shadowy cloak.

So when the package from my dad and stepmom arrived containing the pair of shoes I had left at their house in Missouri, it was a warm cup of delight to discover, tucked in one of the shoes, one dollar bill for each year I had been alive. There was no announcement or acknowledgement of this anywhere in the package or in our previous correspondences; I just saw the characteristic dull green and started pulling the bills out, and they kept coming out, one after another, forming a little money salad on my lap as I sat there grinning with simple, unabashed, childlike gratitude.

“Aw man, I wish I had someone who would send me a shoe full of dollar bills!” lamented my not-exactly-girlfriend whom I had followed to Milwaukee from Seattle.

Dear then-not-exactly-girlfriend: I’m sorry I was such an asshole so many times. I was inexperienced, self-centered, lonely, afraid, unfinished, not completely an adult yet. You weren't perfect either, but you were wiser than me. I genuinely hope you're doing OK now. I only know a little bit about some of the things you've been through. If you don't have anyone now that would send you a shoe full of bills, I bet there's someone you would send something like that to. When you can’t be one thing, you can often be the other thing, and it’s just as good, and probably better.