The Man With Two Red Shoes

One thing I always do when I travel home to London is peruse the family photo albums.

When I moved to Vancouver to attend Emily Carr I had my mom send out some family vacation photos: Point Pelee, Rock Glen, and I think Jack Miner’s. The photos are the old square type.  In all of them are my dad, my brother, and me.  I am aged four to six. Being the photographer, my mom isn’t in them…probably by choice.

I found a stack of them – you guessed it – as I was cleaning out the studio.

I stopped organizing for a few minutes and studied the photos closely.  Suddenly I noticed something I hadn’t before – in all the photos my dad is wearing red tennis sneakers.  This pleasantly surprised me.  I was seventeen years old when he died.  I really only knew him as my dad.  I’ve often felt that I never had enough time with him to learn what kind of person he was – I don’t remember the red sneakers.  Becoming aware of this small nugget of knowledge about him made me grin.

My dad was the kind of guy that wore red tennis sneakers.  Not white.  Not navy.  Not beige.  Red.

How f@#kin’ cool is that?