The first place I look for in a new town is a shoe repair shop. And a used bookstore. It’s not that I need more shoes or books; it’s the smell of leather and old paper. I carry one of my dad’s portfolios for the same reason; the paper is old, the leather laced. Dad stamps every personal item with his name and address. He’s lived in the same house for 45 years. Long ago he also used his social security number until Mom said “Honey? No.”

We are in Ambleside and I not only want but have to find a repair shop. My walking shoes have come apart at the edge. Soon we will be at Granville Public Market and since there are coffee shops and fruit and vegetable and cheese and pickle and hand-crushed olive oil stands, I will need good walking shoes. And when we fly above the Salish Sea to Secretary Island, shoes will be as crucial as raincoats and hats and all the books that I haven’t read; usually lined up in sullen reproach but look – I’m reading you. Stop sullening . No Internet. No shops. No restaurants. Blessed, anticipated, feared silence. We will walk through sheep meadows and apple orchards and search for cult leader Brother XII’s fabled Mason jars filled with gold. Walking, walking, walking.

Where to find a shoe man? An Old English sheepdog drowsed at the feet of the gentle man in the Christian Science Reading Room (I took a Christian Science Monitor Weekly as a thank-you). “I think there’s a shoe repair shop two blocks down,” he said. And so to Marcell’s Shoe Renew.

Marcell was not the old Quebecois shoe man I had pictured. Curt, short, Chinese. He did have the cigarette, so I was one for three.

“Repair?” he asked.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Tuesday.”

“Um, this afternoon?”

“4pm maybe.”

“Thank you.”

And then, I returned at 2pm and hopefully, diffidently, sidled in and raised my eyebrows.

“All done. Ten dollars.”

Sometimes it is the smallest things that make the biggest difference.

June 2 2018