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# Sidewalk
- URL: https://dianaludwick.com/sidewalk-7-23/
- Published: 2026-07-23T14:14:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-07-23T14:14:00.000Z
- Description: “Sidewalk,” on making peace with a new neighbor, written Thursday, July 23, 2026 poem 204 in a series of 365 poems written by Diana Ludwick in 2026. Photo , "Where the Sidewalk Begins," by Diana Ludwick (c) 2026.
- Author: Diana Ludwick
- Tags: 2026 Poetry Challenge, Generational, Nostalgia, Of Place, Perimenopause, Poems, 3% Walk Score, Backpack, Balance Bike, Construction, Exposed Shoulder, Giving Children the Best, High Summer, Hokas, Hot Goss', Jogging, July, parenting, Parents and Children, Progress, Runner, Saline, Sidewalk, Summer, Teenager, Toddler, Weighted Vests, You Do Not Belong, #Migrated-1792872215677, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-10-24 20:03

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.