Footprints

             

           

                My eyebrows rose at the sight of the powdery substance that covered the hardwood floor in my bedroom.  Small footprints marched back and forth through the substance.  Knowing the culprit would not be hard to find, I bent down on my hands and knees for a closer inspection.  Although the powder was light, it wasn’t white enough to be the baby powder I imprudently kept under the bathroom sink.   Sitting back on my knees, I ran my finger across the substance.  Between my thumb and forefinger, the residue felt soft and light.  I sniffed it.  It smelled familiar, but I was still baffled.  Looking at the substance again with my nose to the floor, a glint under the bed caught my eye.   I scooted myself under the bed and reached for the object that reflected the light coming in from the window.  It was a silver top.  Next to it laid an open, empty container.  My intrigue turned to anger.  I pulled myself out from under the bed dragging with me the silver top and the empty container of my $50.00 powdered make up. 

                I yelled out for my son.  A moment later, when I heard the nimble steps of his running feet, my anger subsided.  He appeared at the doorway and stopped.  He hugged the molding around the door and his big, brown eyes bore sheepishly into mine. 

                “Why is mommy’s make up all over the floor in her room?” I asked.

                He let go of the molding once he heard the gentler tone in my voice.  He shrugged, putting his brown, suntanned hands out at his side.  “I needed to see my footprints.” I stared at him for a few seconds, biting my tongue to fetter my laughter.   In the awkwardness of my silence, he added, “That’s all.”  He shrugged again.

                One vacuum, one mop, one bucket of Murphy’s Oil soap, and one leave-mom’s-stuff-alone lecture later, the silence of naptime finally filled the house.  I climbed the attic stairs to dig out one of my favorite classics, deciding to spend these few precious hours to myself ensconced in a novel rather than moving mountains of laundry.   I trekked over and around bins of baby clothes and came to the middle of the attic that sacred ground that holds my bookshelf of novels, poems, short stories and textbooks.

                My fingers skimmed over the worn bindings on the bookshelf.   It had been years since I read Chopin’s The Awakening for the third time, and I was ready to read it a fourth.  I came to the last book on the bottom shelf and it wasn’t there.  I was sure I didn’t miss it.  Standing up, my eyes scanned the books again.  It was not on the shelf.  I turned to the boxes stacked and strewn across the attic floor.  Although the majority of these boxes once enclosed large amounts of diapers and advertised Pampers on the outside, they now contained the relics of my professional and educational life.   

 I decided to dig through my relics.  I started by lugging The Complete Works of Shakespeare off the top of the box closest to me, and I came across notebooks of college lecture notes.  The notebooks were stuffed with old exams and papers I had written.  I pulled one out entitled “Mind Games: The Power of Suggestion in Othello.”  I smiled, remembering the paper and how much I enjoyed picking apart the villain, Iago, and comparing him to the parrot with the same name in the Disney film Aladdin.  I gingerly pushed the paper back into the notebook and placed it back in the box.  Confident that The Awakening was not in there, I pushed the box aside and moved to the next one. 

                I pulled the books out of the box one at time, and set them beside me.  I was determined now to find the one I was looking for.  When the box was empty, I paused and stared at the stacks of literature books piled neatly on the floor.  They stared back and each one begged to be opened and examined.  “Look, look inside me,” they yelled.  “See how the descriptive verbs can create symbolism and imagery and build on a theme!”

I stood up to release myself from my psychotic literary stupor and sneezed from the dust I had kicked up.  On the downward side of the sneeze I saw the last unit I taught before I went out on maternity leave.  It was bound in a three-ring binder on the floor, not in a box.  On the side was written Of Mice and Men.  I knew the novel itself was tucked in the inside pocket of the binder where I left it.   I knew the last lesson plan of the unit was not bound in the rings but tucked behind the novel in the pocket.  I knew scrawled in purple pen across the front page of that last lesson plan was the name Jessica because I wanted to remember the only student I had ever had who openly shed tears in class over a novel. 

The kindled desire to once again immerse myself into the facets of the written word hung before me like a crystal chandelier that pulls at the eye upon entering a two-story foyer.  The search for my favorite classic became a need.  Frantically, I dug through another box, tossing the contents onto the attic floor until the box was empty.  I didn’t waste time with the next one. I dumped it out on the floor, then the one underneath it and the one behind it.  Panting and sweating, I sat down in the middle of the sea of papers and notebooks, textbooks and novels.  Then, I saw one box still unturned.  I grabbed the side and it began to tip.  There on top sat The Awakening.   I snatched the sliding book off the top and let the box turn over, dumping its contents in with the rest.

                The front cover was bent and ripped at the binding.  The pages curled from the humidity that roasted the attic.  Some pages were dog eared at the top and bottom.  As I flipped through the book, passages underlined with purple pen and comments in the margins whispered to me.  On the last page, sentences were underlined with purple lines and surrounded by shouts of exclamation points.  I read them aloud, “She thought of Leonce and the children.  They were a part of her life. But they need not thought that they could possess her, body and soul.”  And then underlined further down on the page, “Good-by –because, I love you.”    

                Rereading the words, I mused over my first reaction to this sentence.  Edna Pontellier was a hero.  She transcended and defied the laws of a male dominated world.  I loved her character when I was single and at the end of my college career. I was ready to embrace her strength.   Reading those words again, though, I questioned whether Kate Chopin’s heroine, Edna Pontellier, had any strength at all.  Is it strength that leads a woman to say goodbye, or is it strength that leads a woman to stay?  When she marries and has children, doesn’t she ask to be possessed by the family for whom she loves and cares?  

 In the midst of my thoughts, I noticed I was surrounded by remnants of a life I once possessed on my own, and I recognized a lost piece of myself.  I wasn’t sure where or when I had lost it. Did I misplace it, or was it taken and now in the possession of someone else?  A million emotions circled through me and I didn’t know which one to pick.  Was I angry or just melancholy?  Amused or content?  Regretful?

Hearing heavy footsteps on the stairs, I turned around to the attic steps.   I saw my husband clad in dirt and work boots surveying the current state of the attic floor.

                “Babe, what are you doing?” His eyebrows peaked in his confusion.  

                I stared up at him, unsure how to answer. A silence lingered between our eyes until my lips parted in a smile and I told him,   “I needed to see my footprints.”