Remember When

Merriweather Park is always the most beautiful place in Johnstown, but on days like today it’s particularly glorious. The sun beams bright over the lush grassy expanses where children kick a black-and-white checkered ball around. More children laugh and clamber over the plastic and metal jungle gym, which is partially shaded by the oak and maple trees towering overhead. A light spring breeze blows through the park, ruffling the gray hair of George and Melanie Dennison as they sit on a shaded bench near the swingset.

“A shame no one’s enjoying the best part of the playground, eh, Mel?” George asks in a weathered voice, gesturing with his cane towards the swings.

“Why don’t we show ’em what’s what, George?” Melanie answers with a twinkle in her hazel eyes. “We aren’t too old to enjoy the finer things yet!”

“I think our son would disagree…” George trails off as Melanie heaves herself to her feet and hobbles over to the swings. He laughs and shakes his head, then carefully follows his wife, leaving his cane on the bench behind him. By the time his slow, shuffling steps have gotten him to a swing, Melanie is already perched on the one next to it, trying to get herself moving.

“John will be shouting about how we aren’t allowed to do stupid shit if he finds out about this,” George warns as he struggles to hoist himself onto the swing.

“John can shove it. We ain’t in the grave yet. But this ain’t as easy as I remember it being, George.” Try as she might, Melanie can’t get any momentum with her bony, wrinkled legs.

“That’s all right. Let’s just enjoy the sun. How many years we been comin’ to this park, now?”

“Well, let’s see… We’ll have been married fifty-seven years this June…”

“Yeah, but we met before that. Do you remember–”

“How could I forget? My family had just moved to Johnstown…”

Melanie was just five years old and had never seen anything so wonderful as Johnstown’s Merriweather Park. It was late August and the hottest summer on record, but that didn’t stop little Melanie from whooping and hollering and running all over the playground–playing in the sandbox, getting sand and mulch in her pinafore, and swinging as high as she could go with her dad pushing her.

“I bet I can get higher,” the boy on the swing next to Melanie challenged.

“Bet you can’t!” Melanie retorted.

That was the first time she met George. Their fathers pushed their swings to higher and higher heights. Melanie was afraid her swing would do a loop all the way around the upper support bar. She shrieked and clung to the swing, but she was grinning the whole time. They had to declare the swinging contest a tie once their fathers’ arms got too tired to push them. Melanie didn’t mind. She was having the time of her life. Meanwhile, her mother and George’s had made friends, too, knitting side by side on a nearby park bench.

From that day on, Melanie and George got to play together every Saturday in Merriweather Park, as long as the weather was fine. On Sundays, it turned out their families went to the same church, and so they were in Sunday School together. When kindergarten started after Labor Day, they were delighted to learn they were in the same class.

“How many Saturday afternoons d’you think we spent here, seeing how high we could sail on these swings?” George asks Melanie, breaking her out of her reverie. Her small hand with skin like tissue paper finds its way into his larger, weathered one.

“Oh, George, I’ve never been much for counting. And I could never count that high.”

The two of them laugh and smile into one another’s eyes. Across the playground, they catch sight of an awkward teenage couple, also holding hands, unsure of how to be around each other.

“Awww, look at them,” Melanie prompts her husband, gesturing with her free hand towards the young pair. “Remember when we were like that?”

“You mean, when you stopped telling me to get lost in the middle school cafeteria and finally let me take you on a date?” George teases.

“Some date! You brought me here, the same place we’d been playing together for years!”

“And what better place to go? Would you have liked anything better?”

Melanie chuckles. “No. It was perfect.”

“Especially our first kiss.” George leans over and plants a smooch on Melanie’s cheek, making her giggle and blush like a schoolgirl. Their swings twist and protest their changes in position, and both cling to the chains tightly to avoid falling off.

“It’s really too bad they cut down that willow tree and filled in the pond,” Melanie sighs, staring across the soccer fields full of scrambling children.

“I guess the city’s need for more soccer fields mattered more than some of our best memories,” George grumbles, squeezing Melanie’s hand.

“Remember when we went under that willow last?”

“Best night of my life…”

It was twilight on a warm day at the beginning edge of summer. George and Melanie were barely eighteen. Though the evening was mild and the sunset was gorgeous, Melanie came running to the willow by the pond in Merriweather Park with silent tears streaking down her cheeks. She threw herself on the soft earth beneath the tree and sobbed, not caring whether her dress got dirty.

Not long after, George crept into the shelter of the willow’s branches. “Hey, take it easy, Mel. What’re you cryin’ for?”

“Oh, George, it’s just awful! My mother and your mother got in such a quarrel in our kitchen this afternoon! They called each other terrible names, and then my father got involved and broke them apart and sent your mother home–”

“I heard from her. That’s why I came out. Thought you’d be here, if you’d seen the whole thing.”

“George, they don’t want me to see you anymore, because they can’t stand the sight of your parents.”

“My parents are just as mad. And I don’t understand it. What were they even fighting about?”

“Something to do with that charity dinner the church is planning for the Fourth of July, I think. Seems church politics got ugly, and somehow our mothers ended up on opposite sides.”

“But what’s that to us?”

“It don’t matter at all to me.”

“Me either. So I’m not gonna let that keep me from seeing you.”

“But my father said–”

“Won’t matter if we elope.” George pulled a small velvet box out of his back pocket and knelt next to Melanie in the dirt. “I know we’re just startin’ our lives, that we just graduated high school, but I don’t see me doin’ life with anyone but you.” He opened the box to reveal a simple gold band set with a single diamond.

“Oh, George!” Melanie flung her arms around him, nearly sending them both tumbling into the pond.

“Meet me at the courthouse tomorrow morning?” he whispered in her ear.

“Yes. Yes!” Melanie squeezed him tight, then took the ring and tried it on. “Oh, George, it’s beautiful.”

“Just like you. But you better hide that, so your parents don’t catch on.”

“Where will we go once we’re married?”

“I’ll get something figured out. I’ve got an aunt and uncle who live a couple towns over who might let us stay with them until this charity dinner storm blows over.”

They spent a few more minutes under the willow tree, making plans for the future, before crawling out and brushing each other off. And then, though dusk gathered quickly, they took time to swing together, holding hands and trying to kick the stars as they blinked into the darkening sky above.

“The next night was better,” Melanie tells George with a wink, thinking about how they’d spent their wedding night in a motel paid for by George’s uncle, just down the road from his uncle’s house.

“Guess that’s fair,” George chuckles. “You were a wild thing that night.”

“No wilder than you! You couldn’t keep your hands off me–”

“And who could blame me? I’ve got the prettiest wife in the whole world.”

“Awww, you–” George’s lips on Melanie’s cut her short.

“Ewww, get a room!” a teenage boy taunts them from across the playground.

“Dave, be nice!” his date chides as George and Melanie pull apart to glare at the whippersnappers.

“Son, don’t tell me you’ve never felt some kind of way about a woman,” George says to Dave, fixing him with the kind of disappointed dad look that makes teenagers melt in their shoes. Dave squirms and looks sideways at the girl he’s been walking with and says nothing.

“You wanna give us a hand? Help us enjoy life the way we did when we was your age?” Melanie asks them. Her smile is kindly, but mischief still flashes in her eyes.

“Sure. What do you have in mind, ma’am?” the girl asks.

“First, call me Melanie. This here’s George. And you are?”

“Sarah, and this is Dave.”

Melanie nods as if she’d expected this answer. “You’re Maude’s granddaughter, aren’t you?”

“How did you–”

“Recognized you from church. But that’s no matter. We’re havin’ trouble getting these swings moving. Can you give us a few little pushes, help us get moving?”

“Be careful with us, though. My son’ll be madder than a hornet’s nest if one of us gets hurt doin’ somethin’ he’d call ‘stupid shit,’” George interjects.

Sarah and Dave exchange glances, then giggle. “Sure, we can help you out,” Dave relents. “But we’ll stick around to help you stop and get down, too. Can’t have that son of yours coming after us.”

“Perfect. What do you think, Mel?”

“Let’s fly! I bet I can swing higher than you can!”

“You’re on! Dave, let’s prove her wrong!”

“Not on my watch!” Sarah laughs, giving Melanie a strong push, sending her swing skyward.

“Yippee!” Melanie hoots, feeling forty years younger as she swings back and forth, propelled by her friend’s granddaughter.

“I’m comin’ for ya, Mel!” George hollers as Dave gets his swing moving.

And for the rest of the afternoon, neither George nor Melanie can say whether they were seven or eighteen or seventy-five. All that matters is that they’re together and having fun in the most beautiful place in Johnstown.