Seasons

My shoes were only felt soled when we first moved to the cottage by the church. I could throw them lightly over our garden wall and it fast became each day’s adventure to be lowered down amongst a sea of graves to find them. Long before I could read I ran my fingers along each name, etched gold in stone, and imagine who each stranger here had ever been. There was never uncertainty, nor fear in knowing I was just six feet above their bones because these were my silent friends - ever present, always guarding my shoes.If I asked my mother about any one of them her answer was always a hanging awkwardness.She would say they were all in heaven now, as if that really was all to be said. I learned young that what took comfort from her, and most others, somehow gave me a comfort of curiosity. Years, and the seasons of them moved always like fast tides, but those gravestones were always rowed and rooted just beyond my bedroom window, to remind me that all seasons change …. Until they don’t. So I held tight to that quirk of kicking my shoes over that weathered graveyard wall, to go sit amongst my silent friends, and have them listen. You grow in the world and then its grip around you tightens. Even the most free souls who might want their shoes catapulted ever more amongst the dead will surely pull you to doubt. My shoes began to to stay on my feet, even in uncomfortable summers but still their footsteps took me to those graves. Those muted chats with the past were always clear in soft light and stillness. Each headstone felt like a distant family member I looked to connect with, to respect and even impress because their seasons were finished, yet mine were not. Now my feet are heavy booted and splinted to the knees because my seasons have brought me storms of trial and change. I can no longer stand, nor step without a sturdy walking frame before me that shows the world every step forward is a conscious choice now, with compromise and consequence. The garden wall now stands apologetically as a churchyard boundary never to be scaled in bare feet again. Still, it is my doorway so it is only the journey through that changes. No longer an easy flip jump over holy stone, it is now 247 slow, clumsy steps along the border wall to the creak of the church front gate. Whatever the season that journey is always wanted, and still worth every step. It takes me to my kinship of strangers, who all still have their stories to share lessons learned through every step scaled or stumbled. There is only loss here if heads look away. My seasons still offer me the opportunity for more, for new, just as seasons once did for them - and so they whisper to me every day that scuffed boots still travel far.