A helmet-clad toddler, all
bright summer shorts and teal shirt,
whirls up a hill on tiny wheels,
a balance bike glistening
under morning rays.
Their guardian jogs alongside,
chuckling, Hokas striking
clamshell-hued cement
keeping pace with his eager charge.
I drive by, glancing back,
hands at ten and two
willing my hands to give
wide berth to the duo.
Drops hit my cheeks,
summer rain;
warm and wet
and without warning.
This vignette in motion
is one my own family missed.
I think back to my own toddler's
car-bound upbringing.
How much would
we have benefited
from the bounty
of a stretch of sidewalk
to connect us to a larger world?
How isolated we'd been;
how much I'd underestimated
what a "3% walk score" would mean
when we moved in so many years ago.
I envision giving my child a redo,
a world where they could have safely
scaled the hills and l
earned to flex their bones
beyond the thick woods
through the suburbs
without fear of swift, ceaseless traffic
that cuts this blind-curved road
with the discretion of a stampede
of touring edition, chrome-addled bulls.
I let my tears flow freely.
I whisper a blessing
for that pair on the pavement.
And for that runner up ahead
with her chocolate lab on leash.
And for the two women in weighted vests
with a flush in their faces
that comes more from hot goss',
than the exertion of their uphill walk.
A bustling ecosystem of bipedal beings
have found new ways to craft core memories
in this newfound strip
of useable, impermeable land.
I am grateful for our present, our future,
while I process my own grief
of what my own kid missed.
The joy, the relief, the gratitude
for a wider, safer future,
and the sorrow for not giving
this paved world to my child
in time for her own upbringing,
I hold this all, make room for it
like our old narrow road
now bears a wide path beckoning use.
I shake off the last wet load
of hormone-laden saline
with the swipe of my left pinkie.
My mind finds me back in the tight loops
of past stroller walks inside my hilly,
narrow neighborhood
each push of the rickety pram chiding me,
"you do not belong."
I replace these memories with a dream
of my now teenager
striding up this new, broad sidewalk
ambulating themselves to school
a brand new backpack on their exposed shoulder,
opening up a world for them
I did not have here at their age.
Progress may not always be on time,
but I can welcome it when it arrives.
