By Thea Jarvis

It is Wednesday at the Open Door. Time for the “foot nurse” to appear.

Ann Connor, in jeans and sweater, moves some rudimentary equipment to a side office. Her usual spot has been temporarily overtaken by assorted typists, painters and passers-through. In the new space, cramped but cozy, Ann sorts out her simple tools – a pair of nail clippers, a mini-scalpel, salve, and an oversized plastic tub filled with warm salty water.

“It’s amazing what people walk around on,” Ann says, straightening out the plastic shower curtain under the tub. Calluses an inch think – “like walking on a stone,” she grimaces, and positions herself on a small low, white-painted stool.

A part-time instructor at the Emory School o f Nursing, Ann Connor spends one morning each week at Atlanta’s Catholic Worker House on Ponce de Leone Avenue tending aching, worn, callused, and sometimes infected and frostbitten feet. Her unshod visitors include house residents who have found shelter at Open Door, as well as folks straight from the street who have been told of Ann’s availability by the house staff.

Many have walked the streets in shoes too tight or too meager to be of service. Others have been plagued with chronic sores or infection from constant wear and tear and too little rest.

Barbara is first in line for Ann’s ministrations today. She slips her feet into the warmth of the water and tells how far she has come under Ann’s care. A fungus infection that had begun a year ago – about the same time she had come to live at Open Door – has been successfully treated and Barbara is currently on a maintenance regimen. She now wears sturdy leather oxfords, fine protection for her feet, she explains, especially when she lost the nails on the infected toes.

Malcolm, a new resident of Open Door, enters next in blue slippers, the only footwear he can manage these days. He hasn’t seen the foot nurse before, and tells Ann the boots he wore through the cold weather caused a deep callus on the side of his foot that is now tender and sore.

“Does it feel like you’re walking on a rock?” Ann asks.

“That’s how it feels,” Malcolm replies.

Grabbing the little scalpel, Ann gingerly removes a layer of dead skin and chats amiably with her new patient. She learns he is a lifetime Atlanta resident and has seen many changes in the cityscape.

When Malcolm recounts a recent injury to his foot – he fell two stories while putting in a window at his mother’s apartment and crushed his heel -- Ann points out that such a trauma could cause the bones in his foot to begin pushing in different directions and might have been a factor in the development of his present problem.

She gently massages Malcolm’s feet with salve and suggests that he come back next week to see her. As he stands up and puts his slippers back on, his face floods with relief.

“It feels much better,” he says gratefully.

In the empty office, Ann explains that it’s more than the foot care. It’s the opportunity to sit down and have someone listen to you as you talk – really listen, one to one. The faces of those she touches relax not just from cessation of pain and discomfort, but from the intimacy of the exchange.

As she finishes with each visitor, Ann hauls the large plastic tub to a rear bathroom for a thorough rinse and fill-up. She is small and young. A long red braid hangs down below her waist and a splash of ingenuous freckles surround clear blue eyes in a face devoid of makeup. But she is strong and confident, and as sensitive to those she cares for as she is steadfast in her conviction that this work is a major part of her life.

The morning moves on. It is eclipse day in Atlanta and the sun, filtering through some high bushes outside the office window, dapples the flowered shower curtain that catches errant drops of water from care-laden feet.

A robust young construction worker just in from Virginia takes off his shoes and uncovers his problem – the soles are puffy and appear pitted, as if he had sat in a bathtub for too long. He had worked a job last night, he says, and his feet became so sore from standing on them that the could barely continue. Playing basketball, a favorite sport, was now a painful experience.

“They’ve been like that for two years,” he tells Ann.

Carefully soaking his feet and cutting his nails, Ann explains that the problem isn’t serious. Just a matter of too much moisture – either from sweating or damp shoes and socks – and not enough drying time.

“Take your shoes and socks off as often as you can,” Ann advises, and let them dry out. There would be an improvement in about a week, she judged.

The newcomer leaves for the community’s clothes closet down the hall to find an extra pair of shoes and socks. After lunch in the soup kitchen, he will sit on the steps outside the Open Door and enjoy the warmth of a fast-eclipsing sun on his feet.

As her patients are tended, Ann fields questions from Catholic workers passing in the hallway and stopping by the office – is this prescription going to be wildly expensive? How many times can someone get a strep infection in one year? Will you be here next week? The children pop in to say a quick hello and run off to play. Having a nurse on the premises, even for a short time, means a bit of professional expertise can be shared and appreciated.

Coleman is Ann’s final visitor, an ever-smiling gnome who lights up whatever room he happens to enter at Open Door.

“You feel like a brand new man when she gets through,” he says of his friend, whom he sees regularly each week.

Coleman was visited with frostbite when he served in the Army in Germany during the second Wold War. When he came to live at the Open Door a year ago, his legs and feet were oozing blood and fluid. He had spent almost seven months in the Veteran’s Administration Hospital in Atlanta some time previously, but the problem kept recurring.

With Ann’s care and his own attention, Coleman’s feet and lower legs are now thriving. The skin is still mottled below the knee from poor circulation caused by the initial frostbite, but Coleman looks as if he could begin a second career in dance if he wasn’t so valuable a member of the Catholic Worker community.

As Ann massages his feet, she asks about the chickens she and her husband are raising on their Decatur property. Coleman, obviously knowledgeable in the science of farm animals, advises that Ann’s cat will be a threat to the smaller poultry but would be hard put to tackle the larger specimens.

From the sidelines, it is clear that the two look forward to their weekly rendezvous.

Around lunchtime, it is time to put away the footstool and pack up the shower curtain. The big plastic bucket is taken off for a final rinse and Ann talks of how she backed into this business of foot care.

Over a year ago, she and her husband sheltered a gentle old man with a terrible foot problem in their home. Eugene had been walking the city for days in “new plastic shoes that almost fit,” Ann recalls, but had to stop by a local hospital because his feet were “bothering” him.

There he learned – after a full eight hours of waiting – that he had blood poisoning, the result of wearing shoes that rubbed the open sores on his feet. When he came to Ann’s house, he was till wearing the shoes that had caused the problem, and the infection was festering despite antibiotics the hospital had administered.

It was a matter of common sense – Ann matter of factly took on the care of Eugene’s feet, soaking, washing, massaging and bandaging. The result was a moving, healing exchange that involved the heart as much as the swollen feet. Ann and her husband decided that such a ministry could be a powerful force for love and healing, as well as a sign and symbol of what we are called to be to others.

“There’s a pleasure involved in someone rubbing your feet,” Ann says. “The people on the street just aren’t touched that much.”

There is a mutual giving, she claims, pointing out that when you care for someone’s feet, sitting like a supplicant on a little painted stool, you must look up to that persona and he must look down at you.

“It puts us in a very literal position of being lower than people on the street,” she feels. “I’m down in a servant situation – it has some deeper meanings.”

Such deeper meanings move Ann, who attends Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church and Oakhurst Baptist Church in Decatur, to encourage others to become involved in such an outreach. It is, she feels, a natural extension of the virtue of hospitality and well within the domain of anyone with a generous heart and a sensitivity to the needy.

Though she advises that severe foot problems – major infections, for example – must be referred to physicians and hospitals, she offers encouragement to those who might consider foot ministry as an adjunct to shelter work. “You could do it,” she smiles. “Don’t let the mystique of nursing stop you.”

It is a simple matter for Ann Connor.

“Feet are important to people on the street,” she believes. “They’re important to everyone.”