Grandma's Wedding Shoes - Ravi Kopra

I’m getting ready
For the garage sale tomorrow.
My grandma passed away
A few weeks ago.
She was a collector of things
You would never know.

I am thinking to sell.
Her pair of wedding shoes
She wore one morning
Sixty years ago
Walking slowly
In a long tailed wedding gown,
Holding a bouquet of flowers in her one hand
While her father held her other hand,
Soon to be given away to her beaux,
Walking beside her, proud, smiling,
In a wedding tuxedo.

Could she have wildly imagined then,
Thirty years later,
Her unwed daughter
Would give me up for adoption
Shortly after I was born?
My mom, a poor mother,
Could not face rasing me up.

I look at the pair of shoes,
They still look new to me.
She saved them as a treasure
In the original box, tucked
Under her wedding grown,
In her old leather suitcase
Made in some small,
Now a non-existent Texas’ town.

The shoes are high heeled,
Light brown, each with two leather straps
To go around ankles,
Some sort of a hybrid
Of dress shoes and sandals,
High fashion luxury of grandma’s days.

I look at them again
And I change my mind.
I will not sell them,
They are worth a fortune to me.

Sixty years ago,
After, “ I do, I do”,
The choir boy rang
the wedding bells
On top of the steeple.
That moment, my grandma
Was wearing these shoes.