The Walking Stick
I walk my way through the sea of red and yellow and I see the world through fire and gold. It’s just another day in a lonely park and it’s empty like it always is. I hear the distant noise of a leaf blower, clearing the mess from driveways and pavements. The black benches are empty, the wind is chilly and there’s an icy bite to the whole atmosphere, not enough to form little clouds every time I breathe. The buildings seem distant like in another world altogether, though it is just another Monday, and I am surprised to see the roads and lanes not bustling with crowds and brimming with vehicles. It’s a weird day. A book clutched in my hand and my shoulder giving into the weight of my tote bag, I walk to a place I have no map for, just where my legs take me. People keep describing fall as this cozy, prewinter, honeymoon period, but to me, it’s always been that weird teenage gawky phase that comes- in this case annually where you just transition from the summers into the white, dreadful winter. The green in the trees gives me a sense of calm, a sense of stability, serenity, and stillness, the red and yellow, though outwardly gorgeous always end up falling. Fall is motion, transition, change, and everything right outside of my comfort zone. I take a sip of some pumpkin spice coffee because apparently, pumpkins are never in trend other than in October. It is quite tasty which makes me wonder why this is not something that is in season all the time. A lone black car passes by, unbothered from one end to the other, just like everything I hear.
I reach a dead end and give myself a moment to overthink where I want to head next. The over-thought process is quite cumbersome. Tired of options and risks ricocheting in my head I decide to take a walk right back to where I started. It seems like the simplest and the most risk-free path I could take since I just traversed that very same path seconds ago. My legs drag my body aimlessly, my eyes wandering and looking for windows and doors to fixate on. I hear footsteps approaching from the back; fear crept through me and I reached into my bag to find something I could hit the person with if I had to. Being slightly on the more sensible side I decided to just take a look as to who it was that was walking behind. The fear wasn’t overpowering because the person behind me walked at a steady but slow pace. The more I listened, I could hear an occasional tap on the floor. I look back and it’s my grandfather, walking himself slowly towards me with a small smile on his face. My initial reaction was of shock, I had not seen him in years, I had moved to a place so far from home that there was no way he could have been walking behind me, I made myself believe I was hallucinating. The weird thing was I did not want to run away from this possible figment of my imagination, his presence and the taps on the pavement gave me the cozy feel that everyone said the fall gave them. While I was lost in my thoughts and trying to rationalize my vision and mind, I hear a faint humming, I had never heard those words or the tune before this. I walk a few steps back to walk alongside him and try to listen to the words. I start to piece the buried memories and the little notes my mother had written down. They were the words that my grandfather had replaced to customize rhymes and lullabies for me as a baby. I leaned into his warmth, I felt myself sink into a pile of leaves, a never-ending one, a bottomless pit, but of comfort and love. I could feel his shoulder against the side of my head, cradling and taking the weight of all my thoughts and emotions, some, I did not even know habited my head. We continue walking the same road, and he starts talking about how he loved watching me play outside home, how he loved listening to me babble and sing, how he loved me like I was with him all the time even when I wasn’t. I could feel the rocking motion of his walk because of his stick and it felt like I was home, this is where my legs were taking me, the place to where I had no map. I didn’t think he would have known how sad I had been about everything that had happened, about where I was and what I was doing. Coming to a new place I felt like I had forgotten everything about him, all the things we did together, and all the love that was there right there- in the space or words between us. He loves the red and yellow in all the trees, he loves the smell of the pumpkin spice in my hand, he seems to see people on the street, he seems to hear conversations, vehicles rumbling and colours other than red and yellow seep into this monochromatic canvas. I start to see it the same way too, I start to see people in the windows my eyes wandered to, the joy in the red and light in the yellow. I start to feel him seeping into my very core, sinking into me instead of the other way round, the tapping slowly becoming my slow and steady heartbeat, my eyes his wonderful, kind, and keen ones, looking for the spark in everything. My memories seem to resurrect themselves and form new little rooms in my mind palace. The walk back seemed to be longer, and though it puzzled me I didn’t fixate on it, I let it drift out of my mind. Fall doesn’t seem all that dull anymore, I see colours in the world I had known years ago- the place I called home 18 years ago. I lost you in the fall 18 years ago, but today, I seem to have found you and myself in the warmth, love, and coziness of this fall.
