Impressions

Once it snowed 15 inches.

My father forayed into the backyard, with me trailing behind, frantically pulling on my plastic snow pants. I was too young to remember why or what mission we were on, but I knew that I needed to follow. My worried mother told me to walk in his footsteps. She knew she couldn’t stop me from leaving.

The footprints were large, rubber-made indentations. The steps to the patio had disappeared in a field of white. There was no sound. Snow makes everything pure and dead.

I could see at the bottom of my father's footprint holes where the tread had imprinted. Everything was white. His steps had sunk into the snow knee-deep.

I hopped from footprint to footprint where the patio used to be, I imagined myself a space man exploring new, hidden worlds, until it became quiet. I no longer saw him. Looking up, I still saw the trail of deep footprints I was too tired and too small to stumble through. My tepid heartbeat resonated in deadness of snow. I was alone and he’d gone too far up the hill for me to see or follow. Stillness was broken only by the occasional snowflake that fell like a careless death.

* * *

Many important men once walked here. They left their impressions that I marvel in and wonder at.

Someone built a part-Parthenon on Calton Hill. I am a part-Parthenon. I am an incomplete masterpiece. Every angle of the original Parthenon was designed to lift and exemplify human beauty. I felt I could have been a Parthenon. But I, like the Edinburgh’s Folly, am just a partial skeleton.

Grace has caressed, but not kissed me. I am destined to walk in the footprints of others. I am the dust brushed aside in the path of the Colossus.

But impressions are vacancies.