Baby Feet

I’ve been walking in my neighborhood a lot lately. We have a miniature poodle that loves his walkies, and when it’s not pouring down rain, he usually is walked three times a day for a half hour or so.

I get bored if we take the same route every time, and he seems to enjoy the novelty of a new route.

One route we take is along Cedarbrook, where I spotted a pair of baby footprints. There’s something about wanting to capture and make permanent a moment of time when our babies are small. We did the same thing, pressing our elementary school aged children’s feet into wet concrete. (Sadly, the section of concrete in our front walk was demolished when our lead water service line was replaced).

Every time I walk past these footprints, I find myself wondering about that child. Where are they now? What are they doing? What sort of childhood did they have? What issues did they overcome growing up? Have they graduated college yet? Are they happy? One thing our city requires is a stamp with the year, and the concrete firm’s name in the freshly placed concrete. Walking through the neighborhood, I get see a variety of dates, from fairly recent to older than I am. The concrete where the baby footprints are dated 1998. We’re twenty years on from then at this writing.

At the same time that I’m thinking about that anonymous baby’s feet being pressed into fresh concrete, I’m reflecting back on 1998. That was the year that I had a study abroad class in France, and we, as a family, spent 7 weeks overseas. That was the year when we spent a week in Cornwall, and where I found a sense of ‘homecoming’ in that land where I had never been, but was connected to through my grandfather, and his kin. That was the year where the World Cup was held in France, and France was victorious. That was the year where we saw what high security looked like: gendarmes with automatic rifles held at the ready when we entered France by ferry, teams of similarly armed soldiers in the Metro, on the streets. We rarely see our police forces armed like that, though we do see civilians armed with semi-automatic assault rifles playing at being a security force, but generally just terrorizing us unarmed folk.

What kind of a world have we created? Not a very good one, in my opinion. Those tiny feet, pressed into the cool, uncured, concrete. We’ve given you a country that has been at war for almost your entire life. We’ve given you a country where unarmed black men can be gunned down by police without justice. We’ve given you a country where sexual assault survivors are disbelieved, and perpetrators are protected. We’ve given you a massive mess that too few are trying to clean up. Anonymous baby of 1998, I’m sorry that the world, the country, the state, and this city is so broken. I sincerely hope you have the ability to fix all this.