Going Out Shoes by Kava Palava
28 March 2021 { General Fiction }
It had been sunny all day, fat bees buzzing, flowers opening. Now it was Saturday night, the big one. Four months of knocking round the house with one weekly trip to the shops and I was sick of the sight of trainers. If only for myself, I was dressing UP.
The evening was beautiful, warm and scented. I giggled, almost giddy to be outside; it was like being thirteen again, wearing your best clothes for a park bench on a Saturday night. This year, we were all teenagers; nowhere to go and desperate for a life outside the house.
I stepped out like I was going to a restaurant, to a ‘do’. I loved those sandals: there were grains of sand on the sole from last holiday, and a spot of oil. No airports this year, although the weather was kind that Spring, sunshine like a blessing and birdsong filling the air. Was it louder? Or were we listening? The mechanical hum of the M60 and the flightpaths were stilled, so we needn’t block them out. Ears open, eyes open, we moved, step by step into the ‘new’ way of being which, it turned out, was an old one we’d forgotten.
I strolled over the railway bridge, past the new builds and up the leafy streets, the comfortable houses with established gardens and the year of construction on the wall: 1898, 1901. They were confident benefactors, with their bandstands and plaques, hand carved by masons. Donating a patch of green when whole fields were ploughed up for canals, for railways, for warehouses and mills. You dropped your scythe and came to town; eventually they’d give you a glimpse of flowers to stop the creep of rickets. Of course, now we had the NHS (and sponsored walks, and foodbanks).
I waited my turn to stand under the tree and inhale the scent. I’d never noticed the two types of blossom, the white like marshmallows on a stick and the pink in circlets, like a bracelet of pompoms. I breathed in perfume, relief and joy. Rather than push myself through traffic, sidestepping beggars and drunks, I sauntered the paths, like I was on holiday; overlooked by tall trees, not tower-blocks, idly crunching on gravel and grass.
Suddenly my nose prickled with tears. I was lucky, I was safe, I was at home. Not everybody was. The sun set and my toes were cold. I walked faster to warm up. Death had made life simpler, smaller, back on a human scale. Poor, fragile, humans, living and dying in a cycle as sure as blossom, and as quick to fall, in one cold wind.
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