The Possibility of the Playground

Last time I was here, I was dressed in corduroy pants and a lightly stained t-shirt, my long hair up in high pigtails. Last time I was here, I was with my mother because last time I was here, my mother was still alive. 

I wasn’t allowed to go on the monkey bars due to my mother’s anxiety that I would fall and cut up my limbs on the woodchips covering the ground below, but sometimes, when she turned away for just one moment, I would reach out and hang on the first bar for a second before returning to the platform and pretending that I hadn’t moved at all.

On some days, it’s hard to remember a time when she was here, but on others, it’s impossible to live knowing that she’s not. There’s something about growing up that makes you overlook the times when it was other people changing and growing around you instead of yourself. It wasn’t until today, walking up to this playground, that I was able to simultaneously remember when she was here and live in the present without her. 

Observing the park around me, my childhood memories flood my brain, and I can’t think of anything else. 

The open field next to the swings was filled with opportunity, a place where the older kids would play soccer or football. We would sit on the blue swings with the yellow, rubber chains and watch them kick the ball back and forth. Sitting there together, a group banded by the anticipation of what the soccer field could mean, was an opportunity in itself. There, we saw a glimpse into the future, when eventually we would be old enough to run around in the open field instead of being the desperate onlookers that we were that day.

But then she died. And we left town and never came back. I didn’t go to a single playground in our new town because that was our place. It was hers and mine. And then, she was gone, so suddenly, and just the thought of visiting a playground without her made my heartache.

As I pace back and forth along the back fence of the park, there are so many pieces missing. It’s not just her. It’s the fact that the orange dinosaur that used to be in the corner is gone, and the slide is all scratched up, the purple paint chipping and fading. They painted the seesaw; It’s blue now, to match the swings. Some parts are updated, and some appear as if they haven’t been used since I was here last. It’s changed immensely, but it also hasn’t changed at all. 

The kids run around, crunching the woodchips with their light-up sneakers, and it takes me back again to when my mom refused to let me buy the sneakers that lit up, with her arguments that they were distractions from the important things in life. 

My love, you should be grateful you have running shoes at all, she would say, her expression softening at the fact that she had to turn me down yet again.

I keep walking, and my eyes are drawn once more to the girls on the soccer field next to the play structure. One girl is laying on the ground in the center of the field, and I almost go over to make sure she’s okay, my instincts kicking in, until I see another girl lay right beside her. They double over in laughter, and my stomach churns at the sight. I miss that more than anything. 

“Mom!” My head snaps to where the small voice is coming from. 

He’s on top of the slide, about to go down it, and he’s smiling wide at the sight of me watching him. 

“Watch this!” 

I just smile and do as he says, knowing that me just being here is enough. Because I remember the feeling, of my mom watching me as I did anything and everything. All she had to do was smile at me and it was like nothing else mattered because she was there with me. I don’t want my son to ever be without that feeling. 

He slides down the slide, and when he hits the ground at the bottom, his shoes hit hard, crunching the woodchips, and he trips slightly, nearly falling over. 

“You okay there, buddy?”

“You know, Mom, I don’t think I’d fall over as much if I had those light-up sneakers with the dogs on them like those kids have.” He points to the opposite side of the park, where a group of boys is huddling around the monkey bars, stomping their feet and laughing. 

“At least you have shoes, my love.” 

It almost makes my heart hurt, but I step back to lean against the fence, letting him run off on his own after a huff and a sigh. 

He joins the kids at the monkey bars, and I open my mouth to shout an objection but think twice. Nothing bad is going to happen. 

I repeat it to myself three times in my head, but I think again. 

“Seth, buddy, no monkey bars!”

“Mooooomm, why,” he whines. 

“You know why, love. You could get hurt.”

“That’s not fair.” He runs up to me, his arms crossed and his eyes squinted. It’s almost, but not quite, impossible to disagree with that face. 

“Life isn’t fair.”

Never once in my early years of life, did I ever think I would be the type of parent to use those words on my child. Every time my mom uttered those words to me, I would do the same as Seth, cross my arms and pout until I got too tired of fighting. But it’s the only thing I could say. Because it’s the only thing that’s true. 

Life isn’t fair. You grow up without your mother. You grow up not being able to climb on the monkey bars or get light-up sneakers. You move towns and have to make all new friends. You become frightened by the playground because you’re afraid of having to be there alone.