The Shoe Tree

A Story by suzy

When you are a child, you think like a child, but later when you grow up you tend to leave what is childish and merge into the world of reality, although sometimes when you never expect it, flashbacks take you back to live in the past for a moment and it makes you smile..

In one of my earliest childhood memories, the ones which emerge as a dream, you can vaguely see them but you know that someday they were real, I see a little girl of five digging the ground with a spoon, and I introduce myself to my own childhood feelings. The night before, my mother was trying to put me to sleep and was reading me a story about a land of magic where people never use money, hence never know greed. A place where you grow trees of shoes then every season you can pick up what you need and leave the rest to others. I fell asleep without hearing the rest of the story, but in my heart I could sense a real growing desire to visit that place and see that tree.

Next day as soon as I woke up I took a shoe of mine and started burying it into the ground, then added some water. I knew it! When you water plants they grow! I kept watching my precious tree for days never losing my devotion, but sadly, it never showed any signs of growing. One day my mother asked me if I had seen that shoe, I shared my hopes, dreams and my deepest worries. I remember my mom hugging me explaining that it's just a story, and some things don't always happen in real life. That day I experienced my first real disappointment. The feeling was so bitter that I spent the day in my room crying.

In the evening my parents took me to a store where I bought new shoes. "Maybe this shop has the right soil for shoe trees" I thought, and kept smiling while my little mind could never believe that my tree doesn't exist.

Twenty years have passed and still I can't see any fruits on my tree. When you grow up you change alot, and maybe I did, but who knows.. we might be losing alot. But then comes a moment sometimes when we really really want that shoe tree of ours to grow..