<p>Question was: What does freedom mean to you?</p>
<p>Today, my baby cousin is learning how to walk. He stumbles, falls, and cries, which reminds me...</p>
<p>“Hold her steady, I need to count her fingers and toes...”
The doctor never completed his sentence, so 16 years later, I’ll complete it for you.
“...she has twelve toes, six on each foot”.</p>
<p>Though somewhat stunned, my parents saw this genetic mutation of mine as a mere disfigurement, if one at all. Considering the fact that my twin sister and I were delivered several weeks premature via C-section and nothing else went awry, my overall successful entrance into the world was classified as a miracle. </p>
<p>They were just glad that I was alive.</p>
<p>Before I was old enough to be conscious of the world around me, my parents made the decision to surgically remove my eleventh and twelfth toes. For the most part, they were motivated by practical and economical factors: My feet were becoming a hindrance to take care of and my mother’s amusement in buying baby shoes was quickly dissipating. My twin was born with ten toes, and they were concerned that one day, I would ask them the daunting question of why she only had ten and I had twelve.</p>
<p>So, at the hands of my parents, I was destined to become “normal”. </p>
<p>But by then, I had already learned how to walk in my extra wide shoes, run in them, and play in them. But my feet, boarded up in a million corners inside the shoes, constantly suffered from blisters. Consequently, I learned to walk, run, and play without wearing any shoes at all. My bare twelve toes acquainted themselves with the ground and then slowly befriended the Earth. They knew the cool marble floors in my home, the dewy morning grass in my garden, the rough cement, and the boiling cobblestone in the summertime. My first memories are of my feet running across my grandmother's garden. My first memory was the feeling of freedom.</p>
<p>After being a part of me for nearly 4 years, my eleventh and twelfth toes were forcibly taken away from me. My remaining ten toes were then tied up in heavy white casts. My feet were separated from the ground, and they gradually and inevitably began to lose the feelings of freedom and liberty. I remained bedridden and trapped for a month before I was finally released from my luxurious solitary confinement. </p>
<p>I forgot how to walk, how to run, and how to play. My feet forgot what it felt like to walk on solid ground; the Earth was no longer a friend. Once my feet learned how to balance, I realized that the rest of my body did not follow suit. Unsteady steps, left in front of right, I learned how to walk again. So, I guess, technically, I didn’t really learn how to walk until I was about 5. But hey, I learned how to walk twice. </p>
<p>Nearly ten years later, I am still walking everywhere with my feet. I will never forget toes eleven and twelve, for they have shown me that a person’s feet is perhaps the third most important part of a body, after the heart and the brain. Feet connect allow us to move through the world, allowing us to see more and feel more. To be able to see all our eyes can hold and learn everything our brains can learn, that’s what freedom means to me.</p>
<p>I walk on the streets of City, State (for privacy reasons) and the alleyways of TriBeCa to feel what millions of men felt, to see what millions of men built. I walk on mountains and hills to feel what wild animals feel, to see what the bushes and trees see. I walk up and down the stairs in my home to feel what my mother works so hard to take care of, and to see where I grew up. </p>
<p>My parents gave me a life; my 12 toed feet have gifted me one. And I’m glad to be alive.</p>