No touch shoes on Alumni

Summer Collindale

July 24, 2020 6:25 AM

No touch shoes by Summer Collindale

Summer sat on the mat. She had kicked her mommy away when she tried to remove her shoes and done it herself. She was now clutching them protectively and pouting. The shoes had been an ongoing battle ground since around this time last year…

Whenever Summer and Auntie Raine went into one of the tents that made up their travelling home, they went through the same routine. Auntie Raine waited for Summer to do her best at pulling off her own shoes, and any outdoor clothes she was wearing. On the whole, she was getting very good at this. Putting on was still tricky, but ripping things off in order to scamper off and play was far more straight forward. Then they put them away together, with Summer setting each item in its place, and Auntie Raine’s sing-song voice accompanying it. Put shoes here. Know where they are later! Put cloak here. Know where it is later!

Today, Summer was with Mommy and Daddy. Daddy was fun. He put Summer up on his shoulders, and the range of dappled light and swimming colours was different from up there. Daddy’s hair smelt odd. A kind of damp, grassy smell. It wasn’t very good. Strawberries were a better smell. But lots of people in Summer’s family smelt like that, so she was somewhat used to it. Mommy smelt nicer and she gave Summer sweet things. She loved Mommy and Daddy and dancy lights and sweet candies and Auntie Raine and sing-songs and the wibawy.

Still, shoulder riding was done and it was time to go inside. Daddy dropped her down and Mommy began tugging at her shoes.

“No!” shouted Summer, indignantly, “I do! I do!” But they’d already gone. She started wriggling out of her cloak and she could do it. It got a little bit stuck though and then she felt someone pulling it away from her. “I can do!” she cried.

“Mommy’s just helping you, baby,” her mother assured her, picking up the shoes and cloak and shoving them away in the nearest of the outside clothing storage bins. It was a jumble of hers and Starr’s and Summer’s stuff – and probably numerous other family members’. It was hard to keep track of things, and why spend the time sorting it all when you could usually dig things out with a summoning charm?

“Where shoe? Where cloak?” Summer asked, reaching, expecting them to be held out to her.

“I put them away, baby. We don’t need them inside.”

“Put shoe. Know eyare layer,” Summer sang, still waiting. No one gave her her shoes.

“Yes, I put shoes away,” her mom confirmed. She didn’t know what Summer was singing to herself but it didn’t seem like a song would be related.

“Put shoe,” Summer repeated, her tone rising to a cry, “Know-eyare-layer. Know-eyare-layer!” she managed to, with the impressive vocal dexterity possible only to small children, managed to half sing, half scream with rising intensity.

“I don’t know what that means. But your shoes are away, baby. Come play.”

“No. Where shoe? Want shoe! Know-eyare-layer!” Summer protested. And, finding this did not immediately bring her shoes back to her, and that these people simply could not be reasoned with, resorted to throwing herself on the ground screaming and sobbing.

“Alright, alright,” here’s your shoes her mom replied, pulling them back out and handing them to her. Summer grabbed the shoes, crying with rage. Before, to the utter mystification of her parents, she threw them on the floor again with one more angry ‘no-eyare-layer!’ and stomped off, in spite of having made such a screaming fuss about having them.

Sometimes Mommy remembered about shoes. Sometimes she didn’t. And now Mommy was asking for her shoes. Saying she would put them where Summer wanted. Summer wanted them inside the tent that they weren’t in any more. She wanted them next to Auntie Raine’s shoes.

“No!” yelled Summer. “My shoes. I gonna put away. You no touch my shoe!” she wriggled past mommy, shuffling to an uncertain stop because she still didn’t know her way around this place. She dropped to a sitting position, clutching her shoes and burst into tears.

“I want Auntie Waine,” she pleaded with her mom yet again.

“Not right now,” mom said.

“When? When see Auntie Waine? When go see Uncle Dabier?” she asked.

“I don’t know who that is,” her mom replied.

“Auntie Waine take me. Go play with Dowa.”

“Oh. That’s not your uncle, sweetie,” her mom sighed.

“Yes. Him is. His name Uncle Dabier,” Summer explained perplexed at how her mom could possibly be so slow as to not realise that someone with ‘uncle’ in their name was an uncle.

“He’s not. He’s not a real uncle, and you’re not going to see him.”

“Him is real!” Summer insisted. Okay, she couldn’t remember much about him, but Auntie Raine had said they were going and she wouldn’t just make up an uncle, and Summer thought she might know a little bit who he was and she wanted to go. “I want play Dowa. I want Auntie Waine! I WANT GO WIBAWY!” Summer sobbed. It had been forever since she had been there. And she had asked and asked and mom kept saying things like ‘Not today’ and ‘soon’ and ‘no’ none of which was going to the library. Summer had tried asking if it would be on Wednesday (no), Thursday (no), Tuesday (she was pretty sure that came next, but still no), Saturday (also no) and that was all of them. She had tried Wednesday again for good measure but it had still been no.

“No. No library!” Mom snapped.

“Yes wibawy! Wibawy NOW!” Summer was fed up of waiting and asking nicely. She stomped a small socked foot from her sitting position.

“STOP ASKING ABOUT THE LIBRARY,” Mom yelled. “We’re not going to the library. You don’t need the stupid library!”

That meant…. Not going? No library? For…. Forever?

“WIBAWY NOT STUPID. YOU THE STUPID. I. GO. WIBAWAY!” Summer screamed forcefully.

And with a pop, she did.

13 Summer Collindale No touch shoes 0 Summer Collindale 1 5

Summer Collindale

August 04, 2020 6:58 AM

I do by myself by Summer Collindale

Summer landed with squish. It was the familiar feeling of a beanbag and she abruptly stopped crying.

“Wibawy?” she whispered. It answered in the well-known and well-loved texture under her fingers, in the familiar blurs of colour that made up the ground, and in the noticeable clean, fresh smell. She wasn’t sure how she was in the library, but that didn’t bother her - after all, she was where she had wanted to be.

She slid off her beanbag, carefully making her way towards the book bins. She was a little unsteady. Normally, she had Auntie Raine or her cane to help her, but both were currently absent. A couple of calls of ‘Auntie Waine?’ into the surrounding area did not bring her forth, but she knew the library. She walked, hands feeling the space around her, until they hit solid wood. She pulled out a book or two, running her hands over the pages. They were alarmingly blank. She could make out colourful swirls on some of the pages, but those were not the interesting part of books. Everything had colours. The good part about books was how they felt. Whenever Auntie Raine gave her a book, it had good things to feel. Someone had taken all the feels out of the books and left only the swirls! She tried two or three but they were all the same!

“No!” she protested, “Where my feels? Auntie Waine?” she called out again.

“Summer?”

It wasn’t Auntie Raine’s voice that answered but it was a familiar one.

“Dan-Dan!” she cried, flinging herself happily at his legs, “The books is broken,” she informed him. “Fix it!”

“Uh, sure,” Dante nodded (it was hard not to nod even though he realised as he did it that it was pointless). He had been in the library to collect last week’s pay for song time when he’d heard this familiar little voice, although as he rummaged for a book that Summer could enjoy, he had one pressing question. It was, if he was honest, the real reason he’d come over to socialise, not that Summer herself wasn’t awesome too, “Where’s Auntie Raine?” he asked, what had been a feeling of… call it ‘hope’ turning to one of concern as he couldn’t spot her in the surrounding area.

“Not here,” Summer told him casually, happily stroking pages as he presented her with a book. “You do the words,” she told him bossily.

“Did you come with mommy or daddy?” he asked. He remembered Jaycee mostly as ‘shouting a lot’ which was not a super helpful description to try to find her by right now but it seemed unlikely that she’d brought Summer, it was always Raine who did.

“No,” said Summer, “What the story?”

“That’s Not My Dragon,” Dante informed her, “Who brought you?”

“Me. I want the wibawy,” Summer told him. “Read!”

“Yeah, you’re in the library,” Dante confirmed.

“READ!”

“That’s not my dragon, his ears are too fluffy…” Dante read, “How did you get here?”

“I want the library. I can find ears!” Summer smiled, running her hand over the page. “Very good,” she prompted him, because he wasn’t saying it.

“Very good,” he said automatically, as what she kept saying filtered through, “Summer… did you come here by yourself?”

“Yes!” Summer said proudly, “I do myself! I do shoes myself. I do wibawy myself. I can do by myself!”

13 Summer Collindale I do by myself 0 Summer Collindale 0 5