SQUIDGY GOLD BOOTS

"Autumn carries more gold in its pocket than all the other seasons..." -Jim Bishop

It's here. FALL. On Sept 22. At last. Finally. Time to watch  the leaves change, and the wind howl. Stomp in rain puddles.

In the morning the mists  hug the forest.

The Stellar Jays hug the trees. Waiting. For peanuts. They shriek in delight when I toss them into the seed pan.

 Patience

"Autumn had arrived. The last blossom whispered.....let me stay awhile...." -Meeta Ahluwalia

Years ago, in the fall, I remember walking to school in cloth sneakers. My mother decided I could have a pair of rubber boots. 

Not the fun gold ones I saw.  Gold with speckles. Oh no. the ugly ones sitting  beside them on the store shelf.

Black  with red rims. Gum boots .They were a little large. But they would splosh through the rain just as well. So I was told. My mother bought those ones. 

Splash. Splash. Sploosh. They kept my feet dry.  Splish . Squidgy squidgy  in the mud. They worked. They were boring.

Then I came up with a fantastic idea to make them more interesting. I cut off the rims and gouged pieces out of the tops. To make flippy pieces like feathers. Flop flop flop went the tops of the ugly gum boots.

My mother had a gold ink pen that she used for Christmas cards. She kept it on her dresser.  I used that to paint gold on the flippy ends. So now when they flopped around there was a splash of gold.

I would hide the re created boots in my back pack, and wear them at school only. Then switch to sneakers for coming home.

One day  I forgot to change.  The puddles and the leaves were too tempting. Splish. Sploosh. Squidgy Squidgy.  I arrived home soaking wet, boots a-flapping. And my mother was home early. Earlyyyyyy.

She didn't say much. I told her they were great for squooshing in the wet mud. She kept looking at me. I think she was trying not to laugh. She took them from me. 

That weekend she took me back to the store. I came home with those gold speckled  boots. I wore them around the house. I wore them outside.  The gold boots were great. But they didn't quite have the same satisfying flap of the other ones. I never saw them again.

Till the day I closed up the house, after my mother  was gone, so many years later. It was a late winter's day, spring just around the corner.

I found those cracked, cut up squidgy boots, flippers flopping, at the back of her bedroom  closet. She had kept them, wrapped in white tissue paper. All that time. Waiting for me to find them again.......

"There is something incredibly nostalgic and significant about the annual cascade of autumn leaves..." -Joe L. Wheeler

 Photographs 2020