As I strolled in circles around the looping path and watched the young parents with their young children, I felt more than a little nostalgic for the days of softball practices on frigid early spring days and idyllic stints in the elaborate playground on the rare warm ones. I'm pretty sure I didn't really enjoy freezing my ass off waiting for my kids' turn at bat, and I'm also fairly certain the playground romps were exhausting, but still, it's a slice of life that seems to have come and gone much too quickly.
I remember being at the same park one day years ago, soon after my father had passed away. I watched a grandfather push a child in a swing and I felt envious and cheated, filled with regret that I had never dragged my father to a playground with the kids on one of his visits. It's a snapshot I wish I had in my mind, of my father pushing my children in a swing, or chasing them through the maze of bridges and slides.
As I rounded the bend near one of the pint sized baseball fields, I heard a child throwing a tantrum. Oh, how I longed for the good old days. It reminded me of the time I was driving my older children to gymnastics in rush hour traffic, feeling as if my head would explode listening to my two-month old scream her head off in her infant seat. My mom called, and, ignoring the strain in my voice, asked me to hold the phone up so she could hear my daughter's cries. At the time, I wanted to throttle both of them. Now I sort of get why my mom thrilled at the sound of the fit. Sort of. For me, it's a snapshot of an ugly scene, but a snapshot just the same, one that has withstood the ravages of time.
It was nice, I must admit, strolling unencumbered in the park, answering to nobody until it was time to pick my daughter up at the high school. It would have been nice, too, to be there with my young children, the three of them running me ragged as I tried desperately to grab a moment on the bench. Ahh, the good old days!
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