Swinging

It was a quiet Saturday, and the sun warmed their shoulders like it did when they were children. Bill and Frank; two friends who’d travelled together through the years, sometimes side by side and sometimes apart. They’d met as scrappy boys in the playground, chasing each other with dirty knees and shirts untucked. Vegemite sandwiches for lunch and long afternoons walking home, talking incessantly the whole way.

Families, careers, homes, trips far away, all came and passed. Time chased them but neither noticed the changes in each other; the wiry grey hair sprouting from ears and nostrils, the deep wrinkles creating crevasses on their faces, the clouds passing across their eyes, the slight stoop and the soft bellies adding a layer to their once tight build.

Life kept moving.

And yet Bill and Frank were lucky. For an unknown reason, the Universe conspired to keep them in each other’s orbit. Both now widowed and with children long grown up and making their own way through the world, they found each other in the community retirement home - just around the corner from the school where they played all those years ago. Perhaps for the comfort of a routine or maybe as a gentle refusal to let go of their past, they would meet each afternoon to walk the well-worn path along the schoolground.

The playground had also changed over time; the metal slippery dip with the white-hot metal slide now replaced with a plastic covered tube, curling to a bouncy rubber mat at the end. The large wooden spinning wheel with the metal handlebars was no longer there. Maybe one too many kid had broken a bone after being flung off when their playmates would test how fast they could make it spin.

But the swings were still there. The hard plastic seats had been replaced by bendy slings, the chains were shorter, and the bouncy rubber covered the grooves in the dirt where you dragged your feet to slow down.

‘Let’s do it’ Frank said.

‘We can’t’! We’d fall off! I don’t even think I could make one of these buggars move anymore' Bill snorted.

‘Of course you could, you old fart. It’s not that hard if kids can do it. Grow a pair of balls!”

‘We’ll break those slings. Your ass is not the Tarzan butt it once was, you know!”

Frank stomped towards the swings.

‘I’m doing it. You can watch or push, I don’t care. But I’m having some fun for a change.’

He ambled over to the swing set and grabbed the chains with both hands, now mottled with liver spots. He aimed his butt at the sling and slowly lowered himself. As he sat down, the chains creaked and the sling seat tightened around his hips as he sat down.

Bill stared at Frank, momentarily tossed up how long he could be indignant before he could admit that he wanted some fun too. That’s the thing about getting older – you get fewer chances to break the rules. You find yourself being told, directed and admonished the more the years pass. Your power and authority disappear with your once youthful body and sharp eyesight.

Bill watched as Frank swayed back and forth, leaning forward, leaning back, leaning forward, leaning back until the force of perpetual motion lifted him away.

Eventually Bill took the chains and sat in the other sling seat. Pushing back with his bum in the seat, he lifted his feet and let go.

Find the sweet spot, lean forward, lean back, lean forward, lean back. Higher, then backwards, then higher.

There was nothing like this feeling. It was the closest they would ever get to zero gravity; that point when the swing is suspended for a split second. Your heart is in your mouth and your stomach is outside your body. The flash of fear when it could all go wrong and the thrill when it doesn’t.

Forwards and backwards, forward and backwards.

They both sat swinging, passing each other and never in synch, like a song slightly out of tune. Side by side, with faces moving closer to the sun like a jet plane, then falling back in shadow looking down at their feet as they rushed past the ground.

Then up towards the sun, then falling back, then up towards the sun...

‘I loved being a kid’ said a slightly breathless Frank.

‘Me too. We had some good times, you and I.’

‘We did. I’m glad we can still have fun times, even if I fall off this damn thing. I’m gonna miss them’.

Bill turned his head to Frank as he whooshed past.

“Whaddya mean?’

Silence except for the creak of the chains.

“Where you going? Maybe I wanna come too,’ Bill snorted again. ‘They don’t let you out of this joint unless you go out in a box!”

Silence.

Up towards the sun, back to the shadows.

"Yep" Frank replied quietly, as if the softness of his voice would make it disappear in the breeze.

Bill turned his head to Frank.

“What’s going on, mate?”

Slowly Frank replied, his voice catching slightly “The doc says I’ve got some tumor business going on and he doesn’t think there’s much that can be done.’ Then louder, with a touch of false bravado “Apparently I’m too old to bother.”

A bitter taste filled Bill’s mouth and his chest felt heavy. His vision blurred as tears filled the creases around his eyes. His throat tightened and time seemed to slow down.

Bill realised he was still swinging, and slowly he let the swing drift lower and lower. Finally, with feet shuffling and catching on the rubber rather than dragging on the dirt ground, he came to a stop.

He turned to Frank, who was still swinging, even higher than before. Frank leaned right back and pushed his feet forward, then when he hit the highest point, he leaned forward like he was diving and tucked old, crooked legs below the seat, falling forward but then he merely skimmed past the ground on his way backwards. When he was as far back as he would swing, Frank threw his body back, clinging to the chains like an old, bent chimpanzee.

‘Why did we ever stop this? There’s nothing like it!”

Bill watched Frank with his face turned upwards, then his chin tucked down as he swung backwards. Bill arched his neck back and looked at the sky as well, listening to the rhythmic creak of the swing set and the slight whoosh as his friend swooped past him.

He sighed deep in his soul. This was life, Bill thought, backwards and forwards. Facing the climb and leaning into the fall, over and over again. The thrill and the fear. It was relentless and out of control.

But the joy.

That’s why we do it, he thought. For the chance that one day, you might actually touch the sky. And it was always so much better when you had your friend swinging beside you.