A golden moment

Grey days.

I’m going to record an earlier time.

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When the sun was casting its drawn-out summer beams on our campus, I was striding up Main Mall beside Buchanan one day to get to somewhere or another. The autumn leaves were thickly strewn about like a giant carpet and crunched beneath my feet. A toddler — a babe? — stood in the middle green grass with its parents. (I shall call it a him because it looked like a him, but really, one can’t tell properly with small children.) His parents were making magic for him: his father was gathering handfuls of the dry leaves and tossing them into the air, letting them fall or float along on an occasional wind. The child knew exactly what was going to happen every time his father threw the leaves up — but that was part of the wonder of it all, that you knew and that it happened the way you knew it would. Every time the father threw the leaves, the baby laughed. I couldn’t help but smile at the scene and his mother smiled at me too.

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Here are some of the snippets of life I wish could have been captured with a camera when they happened:

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A black-and-white feather drifting down in the middle of my vision against a background of green and gold and grey.

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A helium-filled blue balloon caught by the glass ceiling of 99 Chairs, trying still to fulfil its calling to fly.

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A Marbelous cookie from Blue Chip Cookies and trying to work out just what makes it taste so good.

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It’s the smallest details that remind me it doesn’t matter if it’s a grey or golden day.