Footprints is a song that might benefit from explanation. It is based on a dream that I had as a child. I don’t remember how young I was when I had this dream. I also don’t remember if it was a recurring dream or one that made a huge stamp on my memory. It is a dream that I have shared many times over the years and seemed like it was a perfect subject for a song.
In the dream, my parents and I are visiting my grandparents’ house. My sister is not in this dream so I want to think that I had the dream before she was born. I also had this dream before my grandparents had added on to the back of their house. They had a concrete patio that ran along the back of the house. They added a bedroom and an office to the back of the house when I was really young, possibly even before my sister was born. I was four and a half years old when she was born so that gives us some idea of when this dream took place.
Then there was an odd image that appeared. There was an old butter press on the left side. We never used a butter press but my mom had an old one that she used for decoration in our house. Sitting next to it was something that looked like a gourd shaped cookie jar. The neck of the gourd bent over and was attached to the handle of the butter press. The image was very dark and reminded me of a painting in our house that my mother’s aunt had done. Years later, my mom would give this paint to one of her friends who painting over the original. The new painting was a scene of a water mill next to a stream on a snowy winter day.
I’m sure that someone into dream analysis could study this story and my life at the time and tell me why I had it. I’m only curious enough about it to write the line, “Why this, why now? I am only a little child”.
