Why I wear sketchers

Credits google stock

I wanted to burn them. They were huge in comparison to the size of my feet. I was annoyed by them, but my mom said they were the best we could afford.“But the Converse will cost much less”, I said while taking them off at the WSS. “Why can’t I get those?”“Porque estos te van a durar mas tiempo”, said my mom.“Y conociendo te, esos se te van aromper mas rapido.”I crossed my arms ready to throw a tantrum, but my dad was there, and I knew that would means no shoes for anyone.It had been like this for most of my elementary school days, wearing chunky shoes, with the letter S on the side. I was made fun of by other kids because of them.“Those are mom shoes”, said Franco one afternoon while on the playground.

“Mom shoes tu abuela, pendejo”,

I remember saying back. At the time, I didn’t know that I had insulted one of the most precious relatives that he had.

The word grandmother didn’t mean much to me because I had never met mine. My parents crossed the border from Mexico to the U.S. while my mother was still pregnant with me.It was September 16, 2005, when I was first told their story. My parents deemed me mature enough at the age of five to know the basics of their trip. They kept this a tradition, every year unveiling the harsher and more heartbreaking details. For some reason, I remember the story of the safe house the most.My mother described how upon arriving to a safe house in Arizona in 2000, they were forced out of their clothes so they could be washed, a strategy that the coyotes would use so their neighbors wouldn’t suspect that they were hiding people in their house.

Unfortunately, my parents hadn’t packed a second set of clothes, all they had on them was a gallon of water that had lasted the week of travel. But as my sister tells it, there was a nice old man (that reminded her of our great-grandfather) that was nice enough to give them money so they could go shopping for clothes.However, only my dad was allowed to leave the house because my mom was forced to lay down.The women that ran the safe house telling her that she had to rest for the baby.

From what my mom tells me, she had spent 5 days without eating, small sips of water the only thing entering her stomach. Her feet were swollen, and she was scared that I wasn’t going to make it, but she had to make sure that my sister was okay, so she didn’t sleep for days.Even though they had told her to rest, my stubborn mother was helping to make dinner for the 15 or so people that were living in the house. My father had been sent off to buy clothes with a group of people from the safe house while my sister went with the old man to buy Mexican candy at the store at the end of the block.Upon returning, my dad had clothes for my younger sister, decorated with random flowers all over it (my mother still keeps the shirt at the top of her closet next to my baby clothes), clothes for himself and my mom (nothing that would draw the eye).

But my mother hadn’t focused on that. She was focused on the shoe box that he was carrying.“¿Porque no le compraste zapatos a la niña?”, my mother tells me she remembers saying. She remembers getting angry at my dad because that’s where most of the money went, for the shoes with the letter S on the side.“Tu madre estaba tan enojada que pensaba que te le íbas a salir”, my dad told me in a hushed voice at the dinner table.“Pero sabia que le íban a gustar esos zapatos, y aunque no le gustaran, los tenia que usar hasta que llegaramos a Nueva York”, he told me.According to my father, when my mother tried on the shoes, he saw the glimpse of a smile forming on her lips but was immediately replaced with concern due to what was going to happen next.

“Aveces te tocan los buenos”, my dad said about the coyotes. “Pero aveces te tocan los que no les importa si ya pagaste, nada mas te usan para sacar mas dinero.”My dad was referring to the coyotes who would kidnap children from the families that were crossing, or even induce those who were pregnant into labor so they could take the baby. The main reason why my mom stayed awake all of those nights.“Pero nos tocaron los buenos,” said my dad. “Y nos llevaron hasta el tren que nos llevaría a Nueva York.”I remember being shown the pictures of when they arrived to New York, my older sister with ascar on her face, the only indicator of the harsh week they had endured.

My mother, wearing the khaki shoes with a hint of beige with the letter S on the side, still had that concerned look on her face.“No sabia lo que íba a pasar,” said my mother one September, “ pero sabia que tenía que mantener los pies en la tierra para salir adelante.”The shoes with the letter S on the side were worn on my mother’s feet for her ultrasound appointments, my sister’s first day of first grade at the elementary school across the street of my aunt’s apartment where they were living, on the morning of July 2nd when she was taken to the hospital because she had started to feel contractions. She was even wearing them the day that my aunt kicked her and my sister out of the apartment because she had guests over, while my dad was still delivering pizzas in the middle of December. She wore them on the airplane that brought them to California, in the hopes of getting away from family drama and starting anew.She wore them to my culmination in preschool when she had debated on buying herself some new shoes but instead bought me a new dress. It wasn't until my older sister saved up her birthday money to buy her shoes from the same brand for Mother's Day in 2006 that she finally put the beloved shoes in their box and saved them under the bed.

“Esos zapatos me duraron un buen tiempo”, my mom told me a week ago while I was trying to find a box cutter to open my package. “Por eso es que ahora nada mas uso esa marca.”I opened the white box that had two somewhat smaller blue and pink boxes inside of them. I took both of them out and proudly showed the contents to my mom. The white and black chunkyshoes with the letter S were placed nicely inside the box before my mom took them out. Seeinghow my mom gushed over them, I knew what was about to happen.“Estaba tan enojada con tu papa cuando ví que traía esos zapatos”, she started off. That is why I wear sketchers it is more than shoes son recuerdos de familia que me llegan al corazón.