The Sophie’s Shenanigans Sort of Hope

This morning as I got into my 1995 Volvo, I was remembering back to when we had our Jeep ( the whole decade), to when the autumn leaves from our giant maple tree would collect on it’s hood and it’s roof. The children, the dog and I would get in the car to go to school and Sophie (the dog) would go crazy. She would try to ‘catch’ the leaves as they flew up the hood and over the windshield. Sophie would jump and bark with reckless abandon from her esteemed perch in between the front and back seats at what we could only imagine she thought were little colorful evil warriors about to attack her humans from the cruel world outside the window of her family’s traveling machine. Together the kids and I would laugh and laugh. Sometimes we would even put extra leaves on the hood , just to get a longer performance from her.  Sophie went everywhere with us when we had that car. She can’t ride in my 1995 Volvo partly because it’s leather and partly because she is 12 now and after her knee surgery it’s getting harder and harder for her to get in and out of cars.

But after seeing my car bathed in all of the beautiful red leaves this morning, I am selfishly thinking of  maybe just one more autumn ride with her.