Feet On Fire

*leans back against the wall and joys in the stream of cold air blowing at me from the vent above* *takes a nice long sip of my sugar free lemonade*

Hello people. I have been dreaming about this very moment for the past two-thousand-seven-hundred seconds.

Today started out different enough. I woke up in a tent, crawled out, walked twenty feet to my backdoor and went upstairs to check on my babies. After that, it seemed like the day would play out like any average Sunday during this pandemic.

We munched s’more pancakes while watching an online service. Amidst the tears of Dovid and Yoveil, the wrestling of Nahum and Baruch and the sighs of everyone else, the message hopefully penetrated some hearts.

I then spent the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon writing and potentially damaging my eyeballs by staring into a screen for so long.

At last it was announced. It was time for the Sunday Afternoon Walk. This is a time that we look forward to with great apprehension/joy/nervousness/boredom/excitement depending on our moods at the time.

I was bored and tired of looking into said screen. I decided to leave my shoes at home and walk barefoot.

*pause the story*

Let me say, I used to go barefoot everywhere. I’d go on very long walks over sharp gravel and my feet got very tough. Then we spent a winter in Minnesota where it’s impossible to go barefoot and I didn’t get out much that summer. Alas, my feet got soft.

*play the story*

So I set out, obviously ignorant of the fact that it had been eighty all day long and that we would be walking on the sunbaked asphalt. The ground was much hotter than last Sunday and our route was strategically lined up so that 90% of it was in the hot sun.

Fifteen minutes later, both of my feet were boasting of large blisters.

Bravely, we kept walking (Jehosheba also left her shoes at home, so I had a companion in pain). We dreamed of the cloudless sky filling with dark brooding clouds and showering us with it. We dreamed of sitting in our living room and watching the Lord of the Rings movies while eating tons of ice cream. And taking prolonged baths in ice water.

Thirty minutes later. Pain was shooting through our feet with each step. My blisters were squishing. My forehead and top lip were covered in sweat (which came back as soon as I wiped it off). Every part of me was longing for a cold, clear glass of ice water. Anything cold seemed like a distant fantasy.

We were fifteen minutes from home and the pain grew with each passing second. I discovered, as had often happened in the past, that once humans (or at least me) reach a certain point of pain, it hurts so bad that it doesn’t hurt anymore. Still, my feet felt like they were on fire. Minutes seemed to stretch into hours.

At last we stepped through the doors and hurried to the fridge. After quickly draining a huge glass of water, I grabbed my lemonade and hurried to my room. To enjoy this very moment. Of bliss. Of happiness. Of cold flooding down around me. I ignore my throbbing feet.

I’m happy now.

~Hattush

Did you enjoy my over-dramatization of my walk? Do you like to go barefoot? What is the most painful walk that you’ve taken?