Baby Shoes

No son or daughter, mother or father is spared this time.

This isn’t the same as the war last October. At the time, they’d send a warning to a specific building, everyone would evacuate, and a missile would blow it up. In the last few days, the Israeli government has asked that the entirety of Dahye, and many cities in the south evacuate. Over a million have been displaced, living on the streets, in schools, or wherever they’re accepted. Even major universities are now targets. This time is different; everyone, regardless of where they live or what they believe, is affected.

I was at the church center where a bunch of old clothes had been donated. The youth group spent a few hours organizing everything. It was a fun time, listening to music and laughing at the strange pieces of clothing people had donated. Two people tried to fit into one massive skirt; others laughed at the insanely short shorts.

 

Eventually we found a bag full of baby clothes. Tiny socks and shoes, itty bitty shirts and sweaters, and jeans for their chubby little legs. The thing that always gets me are their tiny feet, and as such their tiny shoes. Baby shoes that were to be donated to displaced kids, forced to leave their homes, many with no homes to return to. Baby shoes for kids without a pair of their own. Baby shoes for innocent little souls, still too young to make any choices of their own.

 

At the time of writing this, I sit in a pretty public park near my church. My friends are looking a place to draw with chalk, trying to make sure it’ll wash away eventually.

Ultimately, what are we to do for the tiny feet that will sit in those baby shoes.

A white board sketch Freddy did. This was supposed to be a video that I would have released nearly immediately after the initial warning on all of Dahye, with that drawing being in the background , but I never got around to editing that video so I'll just leave this here.