The shoes at the bottom of the stairs are my father’s magical boots. They are black and huge and made of leather. They have shoelaces that go all the way up to a few inches below his knee. Father’s boots belong at the bottom of the stairs and no one was allowed to touch them, move them or place anything beside them. He didn’t mind, though, when Mother placed her pink slippers beside them. Sometimes they sparkled, other times they looked gray. But we were never to touch father’s boots.
Father’s boots were special. Once, I heard Father from the room telling Mother: “Wife, I need my boots so we’ll have money to feed the children and send them to school.” Mother went out the room and told Father that the boots were under the stairs. When he came home we had bread and chicken for dinner, and pencils and notebooks for school. The boots had brought him money indeed!