If these boots could talk…about 10 years ago I bought these boots for myself and my dear friend Joanna. There was something about them I just loved. In October of 2012, I packed them for our family’s two week trip to the east coast. We had an idyllic vacation in Hershey Park, PA....so idyllic that we were not on our phones, watching the news or otherwise connected to the outside world. On October 27th, our friends from California started texting us warning us of the “Frankenstorm”. We looked briefly and shrugged it off. That night, the owner of the house we rented called us to tell us to GET OUT. She had been rescued in a boat after Hurricane Irene, just two months earlier. That same day, the phone calls from our home base in New York started coming in. Evacuate evacuate evacuate!!! The photos from space looked like the whole east coast was being wiped off the map, so we booked back to New York to clean out my mom’s house and evacuate to we were not sure yet. Thankfully we were able to find a place to stay for a week and were safe and sound. Upon entering my hometown 3 days after Hurricane Sandy, all I could see and smell was burnt homes, destruction, the wrath of the ocean meeting the bay, and the stench of 3000 cesspools that had exploded. I walked through the sludge of my childhood home in disbelief and cried with my neighbors. All of our homes were destroyed by fire or flood. That day, my sister in law borrowed my boots to clean out her basement and returned them months later paint splattered and visually unattractive. I was so upset and about to dump them in the garbage when the voice of reason Joanna Trailov stopped me in my tracks. She said “Those boots have a story, keep them”. Today I am thankful for these stinkin boots, the stories of the past, and the boundless blessings in my life….oh, and the stories to come!
