Beautiful Boots

Hugh asked for, and received, cowboy boots for his 17th birthday. I've never spent so much on a single pair of footwear, but even if he lost the danged things tomorrow, I'd consider it a smart purchase. He's been so happy. I think he may wear the boots in bed. And I completely understand--I have a pair of black leather boots that I wear as often as I can. I put them on, and somehow, the day becomes better.

But it's not just that he's enjoying the boots so much. It's that I'm enjoying him in them. There's something about cowboy boots--I imagine it's the heels combined with the stiff uppers--that makes a fellow walk differently. The walk morphs into a swagger; all the random intensity and staccato energy of a teenaged boy somehow slows and smooths, takes liquid form. God, he is so beautiful.

The boots have also brought me intense enjoyment by catapulting back into memories of Hugh's last pair of cowboy boots.

We were living in England and Hugh had just turned 5. It wasn't an easy time for him;  turning 5 meant not only the rigors of school (far less play-focused than its American counterpart, English early  primary schools actually expect a five-year-old boy to sit in a desk for hours at a time) but also more intense peer pressure, the gradual coming to grips with the at least outward conformity required for a successful negotiation of the quagmire that is one's childhood. Hugh, like most little boys, loved to dress up--but he particularly loved wearing dresses and high heels, a preference that by the age of 5 was distinctly problematic in XY-chromosome circles. At this crucial point, a pair of black leather cowboy boots--proper riding boots with chunky heels--and a Scottish kilt in the Royal Stewart tartan came to the rescue.

The boot were a birthday gift from my sister-in-law, who joined us on holiday in Scotland.  The kilt? Well, we were in Scotland. Scotland has kilts. In short order, so did Hugh. That kilt and those cowboy boots became his standard uniform--a dress and heels he could wear in public, even at the ripe old age of 5. God, he was so beautiful.