Rubber Boots

As a child I remember my sister and I getting a new pair of rubber boots every single year. It was always cause for great excitement, because it meant spring was coming. Off to the store we'd go and pick out some really slick shiny knee-high boots, red if I could find them, and when we walked out of the store we couldn't help but skip with glee and head immediately for the first puddle we saw. We'd stand proudly in the very middle and wave to our Mom. "Look! Dry feet!" It was like a bloody miracle! Who needs to walk on water when with proper footwear you can just walk through it?

On the way to school in the mornings, with my new bright and happy footwear, I'd race my sister along the edges of the sidewalk from the house to the bus stop, and from the bus stop to the school, trying to stomp the most ice. There were the spots where the crust had frozen over but the water underneath had all leaked away so that when I stomped, it sounded like shattering glass. As if looking through a glass-bottom boat, there were the spots where I could see rotted leaves and road sludge settled in the water beneath the ice, and sometimes a little lost toy or a bottle cap or a bubble gum cartoon.


I'd stomp and stir up all the sediment with the toe of my pretty new rubber boots and make a nice murky muddy puddle. There were the skinny little frozen rivers right along the edge where the sidewalk met the lawns that I liked to go along tapping with my toes - the ice-breaking equivalent, I suppose, of eating a cob of corn row by row. And sometimes, I'd find a HUGE puddle, usually in some spot of some lawn that was lower than the rest , and if I'd happen to be able to find me a stick, I'd poke a few holes first, then step on the edge carefully, lightly, to send up little geysers before breaking through one end and slicing to the other side by shuffling my feet, setting adrift geometric chunks of ice floes.

I always thought my sister and I were the only people on the planet who broke up the ice on spring puddles. In my mind, it was like we'd invented it, really, and never once did I give consideration that anyone else might do the same thing...

The spring thaw has turned our back yard into a series of lakes, settling in a large delta that stretches from the sidewalk, around the corner of the garage, and out to the parking pad. One cannot make it from the house to the van dry-footed without a pair of rubber boots. Despite all the spring warmth, it was still pretty chilly outside Saturday morning when my son and I were heading out to buy groceries, and the sun hadn't cleared the garage to shine in the yard yet. The balmy daytime temperatures and cool overnight lows can mean only one thing: cracking the ice on the puddles! I was genuinely impressed with how well versed my son was in the artform, especially when he picked up a stick and said, "Watch this Mama," and proceeded to put on a frozen-puddle geyser show for me.

Wil's feet are the same size as mine, now, and he has adopted my rubber boots since his from last year were way too small, and so I get wet feet lately. My mission for this week is to go buy me a new pair of rubber boots.