Cathedral Snow and Green Boots

I would look up about once an hour when the sea gull flew by, about 10 yards up, with wings spread out, looking down at the sand in front of my feet. It was snowing in the book I was reading and the author was describing the silence. It sent me back to the suburbs of Richmond in the early 80’s winters with the long narrow pine cones and the man named Henry with a collection of 300 pipes in his den. He would tell my brother and I about the imaginary animal that had been seen down the creek a ways, closer to the James River. He would squeeze our funny bone and grin.

When it was snowing I was into the silence and the evergreen trees being covered gently by the snow and would see no one. The green and the snow and the muffled quiet. And then a muddy green, the color of the boots our Dad would buy us every few years somewhere in old downtown Richmond. The boots weren’t steel toed but you could kick off the grey sludge ice from the exhaust pipe and you only felt the strength of your shoes and the grown up force about that action. The breaking off of buildup from a day of work driving around that grown ups have to do.

I didn’t have an inkling of the things I would see later on that would resemble that quiet like the snow and the green boots but I did now and looked back to the quiet time many years later from then, walking through the cathedral in Amiens and the dreaming at night about time and fate and flying in the night. And then waking up before riding the train to Paris, looking at the cathedral from the house across the river where I stayed sometimes. Now that time was mixed and acquainted with the memories of the snow and the green boots and sitting on the beach reading.

The light shining through the once stained glass on to the art deco kitchen with the 18th century beams and the egg blue green tea kettle and the train station just a short walk away. Leaving just in time for a weekend trip to visit the friend of a friend in Paris who lived behind the street where Zola once was.

All these disparate memories melded in some perfect way and you were able to kick them off in one piece with your boots, like the sludge on the exhaust in winter in Richmond, pick them up and watch them melt in your hands and let them go before they lost their shape.

And the seagull would fly by again and then stop and swoop down and grab some scrap of food and fly away and you would stop reading and pick up your chair and pack your things and know you were going home soon and it wasn’t sad. It was your place now.

Related posts:

Are web development services different than web design services? What do you need and how do you know the difference? It can be very confusing for sure, especially because so many people in the…

The advent of iPhone and iPad has revolutionized the way of doing business worldwide. With enterprise-friendly features and enhanced data security, the iOS has become a preferred platform for the…

In a world where we are bombarded daily with news that seems to be more and more negative, it’s tempting to feel powerless. As a whole society, it feels like there is not much to be done about global…