A poem for my not-so-wee-anymore wee one.
Little Brown Feet
Your lips curve like a
crescent moon when I say it,
framed by dimples that
punctuate your cheeks
like quotation marks. Your
smile
speaks to me as I skim
one finger along
the inner arch of your
foot, tracing the well-worn
path to your heel. Your skin
is tanned
like leather, soft but
durable. It strikes
a balance between tender
and hardened.
Yours are the feet of a
young traveler.
They’ve touched concrete,
gravel, stone,
caressed shredded rubber
at the playground
where we played when
Daddy was away.
They’ve kissed dirt,
sand, and snow,
slid and shuffled across
the hardwood of our kitchen floor,
been heated by the
sun-soaked nylon
of the trampoline as you
bounce with your brothers,
and frozen by frosted
grass on cold winter mornings.
(You don’t like shoes,
and I don’t like arguing.)
Some soles aren’t meant
to be contained.
Those little brown feet
have danced with my spirit
and tiptoed into my
heart.
“Mama, those are my feet,
my little brown feet.
Like chocolate,” you laugh
as your vocabulary bursts
open like a chrysalis
at the peak of spring. Your
wings are spreading,
and I witness it from the
closest distance you allow,
a casual observer awed by
rapid evolution.
“Yes,” I agree, my head
nodding under the weight
of nostalgia as I note
how big those feet are becoming.
“Like chocolate.” The
words taste bittersweet.
“Do you want me to carry
you?”
We walk along the
battered country road,
your (still somewhat)
little hand cupped perfectly inside mine
like a Russian tea doll. You
blithely skip
over potholes, dodge
rocks, navigate the banked asphalt
like a seasoned explorer.
You look ahead
to where Daddy and your
big brothers press onward.
“No, Mama,” you say, “I
can do it.”
You release my hand and
surge forward.
I watch as your (maybe
not so) little
brown feet slap the
pavement, carrying you
away from me. I feel my
lips pull upward,
lifting at the heaviness
in my heart as I marvel at how
feet so little can leave
footprints so large.
