!Afoot --- agk's diary 13 January 2025 @ 16:26 UTC --- written on Pinebook Pro at Evy's desk as the laundry dries --- I woke to the phone's muffled ring from my purse in the living room. On her way to her first nursing school clinical day, Evy's car abruptly cut off, wouldn't restart, just click. The doors wouldn't even lock! Alternator? I drove to Evy in my nightgown. In neutral we pushed her car into the breakdown lane. She called her clinical instructor and dropped me at home. A few hours later the tow truck driver took Evy's car to our mechanic. I'll get the key out there this afternoon. After breakfast, I walked daughter to school. I need a chainbreak to fix my bike and a nylon dowel no one carries to fix her chariot. Through snow unshoveled, heaped atop narrow side- walks, our boots crunched. Cars sped by at 70kph. We held hands. Some snow was dirty. Past the public housing project we walked (yes, there's public housing in most small towns!). There, snow was tramped down by others' feet. After fifteen minutes afoot, a-slip and a-crunch, daughter had something to say. "I wish my school was closer, Mama." "Are your legs tired?" "No, it's just lonely. Nobody else is walking at all. Everybody's just driving their cars so fast. I wish somebody would walk with us." Roads, perfectly clear, were indeed well-traveled. I was thinking something similar, about neglect of pedestrians discouraging walking in our pretty walkable town. "I think they'd be happier people if more of them walked," I said. "And you and me would be less lonely if they walked with us." "Yeah," said daughter. Twenty-five minutes brought us to her school. Daughter's teacher lamented for me. "I'd a given you a ride if I could," she said. "I'm just a couple blocks past the Peacemakers motorcycle clubhouse," I said. "It wasn't too bad." It would have been a nice walk, and maybe a less lonely walk, if the infrastructure was maintained and a little different. In Illinois, the state just to our north, a daycare shortage drives nursing students to drop daughters more than 300 km from home, and drive the same distance after clinicals to get them. Our little bit of neglect's not so bad. --- Update: When I picked daughter up from school in my car, she cried. "I wanted to walk with you, not drive. I wanted to hold hands and feel cold air on my body," sobbed daughter. Of course I feel proud. Of course I want this, too.