"Boots"

Mom tells me to wash the bottoms of my shoes after I get home from school.

I never understood why, really. We leave our shoes at the door, just beside the mat which she shampoos every week. Dad used to call her "neurotic" a lot before the divorce. I guess this is what he meant by that.

"Be sure to use the right sponge, hon," she says, sometimes laughing at the routine rhyme, "We don't want to be eating off of plates with germs all over them."

"But the soap kills the germs, Mom," I tell her.

She just shakes her head. Eventually, I decide that she knows something I don't, and only end up mentioning the germ-killing soap when I'm in a bad mood. I say it pretty frequently during my middle years of high school, but by the time I'm a senior, the protests peter off and come to an end by the second semester.

"Yes, mom," I say in the end. And in the weeks leading up to graduation, "Sure thing."

Dad left us a second time after I graduated-- that is to say, he died.

Mom went with me to the funeral. I couldn't see enough through my own tears to know whether or not she was crying herself.

When I got home, she didn't tell me to wash my shoes. Still, I washed them.