I was three, maybe four years old in northeastern Ohio. It was a cool autumn afternoon. My parents wanted us to help rake up the leaves one afternoon. If you have ever lived there you will know why. It’s easier to pick them up when they are freshly fallen and dry. If you wait, the pack down, get wet and become hard to deal with. It was one of those magical afternoons where the sunlight filters down through the mature forest. I vividly remember the motes of dust hanging the forest trees suspended in a rays of light. The dust just hung there, suspended in time and space while the birds and the locusts sang songs the an autumn song. I took my shoes off, like I still do. There is nothing like the feeling of green grass and crunchy leaves underfoot. These shoes were the first sneakers I remember picking out for myself. They were blue with white stripes and had a rubber sole that wrapped up and over the toes. On the bottom of the sole, the tread had a zig zag pattern that made you faster just by looking at it. Because these shoes were special I put them to the side before I tackled one of my siblings into the mountainous pile of red, orange and yellow leaves we had raked together. Unfortunately the pile of leaves scattered the more we jumped and wrestled on top of it. And then we had to rake them up again. So we raked them into the woods by the edge of the ravine. When mom called, I went to grab my shoes. I could only find one. Knowing the other was in the pile of leaves - I jumped back in and began casting about trying to find it. I felt it and grabbed on with my left hand. Then my sister jumped on me and we went tumbling through the pile of leaves into the woods and part way down the hill on top of the ravine. The shoe was gone. Now, instead of a pile of leaves on top of green grass, there was a thin, pre-winter blanket of leaves above my knees covering the forest floor. It was hiding my shoe. I went back to that spot often; I looked for that shoe until it snowed that year. I kept the mate until spring cleaning and when I cleaned out my closet, I let it go and moved on. I still think about the shoe that went missing. But I never start by thinking about it. Often, I remember the sunshine filtering through the mid-western forest trees. I remember an enormous pile of leaves. I remember laughing with my siblings on a cool fall day that ended with a lost shoe.
8/21/2013 ~ 3 min read
