I was beside the master craftsman, delighting him day after day, ever at play in his presence, at play everywhere on his earth, delighting to be with the children of men. Proverbs 8:30-31
Last week, I was thinking about decorum. I felt awkward about my daughter’s religious experiments as she played with God at the dinner table. Ron Fischer, a minister in Nanaimo, B.C., made a wonderful comment: “Who are we to say what God finds proper?” So this week, I’m thinking about play. And playgrounds.
I grew up in a verdant suburban neighbourhood. My family was the second family to own the house, and the trees around were tall and leafy. There were lots of other kids on the street, and lots of other streets just like ours. One block over and one block down, there was a park in behind what had been the local primary school when my parents moved into the neighbourhood. The school had been shut down before I started classes and, by the time I was playing in the park with my friends, it was an independent school and therefore very mysterious. We used to look in the windows, trying to read blackboards in dim rooms, and some of the older kids would climb up onto the roof and disappear. The rest of us would ride our bikes up and down the hill (where my father had assured me a giant lay buried, asleep) or we would play endless games of Blind Man’s Bluff in the playground. There were the inevitable swings and a tall metal slide that got searingly hot in the summer, a 1960’s geodesic climbing frame and a large wooden play structure with a wobbly bridge in the middle, and all around there were open playing fields.
I don’t remember any adults there at all.
When Beangirl was on the way, Spouse and I lived downtown in an apartment on the top floor of an old house. Our street was lined with large, leafy trees. Just around the corner, there was a park. It was a different sort of park. For one thing, it was fenced in with a sturdy gate that squeaked mightily when it swung open. And it was a full park: swings and slides and play structures, yes, and also a wading pool and picnic tables, a basketball court, a field house for community events, tennis courts, even some grass if you want to kick a ball around. All that makes it sound big, but this park was tiny, tucked in discreetly behind a coffee shop on Elgin Street in Ottawa.
And there were parents everywhere.
I used to walk past it on the way back from the bus after an appointment with my midwife, and dream about the days in the not-too-distant future when I too would sit in the park with my baby, a mother established and watching the other children play.
When Beangirl was born, I realized how tiny a newborn is, and how sitting in a hot, noisy park may not be the best bonding idea. She and I stayed home a lot that summer, learning to nurse and napping together on our third floor porch, up among the leafy trees. But she grew bigger and older, and I met other mums and their babies, and that park became a haven for us all. A place to always find someone, one of the inevitable stops each day.
We’ve moved away from downtown Ottawa. For the first four months of this year, we stayed with my parents, back out in the west-end suburbs. My parents still live in the house where I grew up, and it was a little strange raising kids where I was raised. Spouse and I slept in the spare room, and the kids shared the room across the hall, the room I once shared with my own little brother. They spent their days playing with blocks—the same wooden blocks, the same plastic kitchen set and the same Fisher Price doll house with the yellow roof and the doorbell that really rang. And, when the snow melted, we took them down the street to the same playground.
The architecture of the playground has been changed since I was a kid. The hot slide is gone, and the wobbly bridge has been replaced. There are new play structures now, and they are labelled clearly as to their specific age appropriateness. The school building has changed hands again, and a community centre has been built and aged to obsolescence. It will be torn down soon, and there’s talk of building houses over half the park. Increased population density and all that.
The kids I played with are gone, too, scattered and misplaced somehow along the way. I have one dear friend I’m still in touch with, but he lives in Finland, and he can’t watch my children now playing in the playground. They are small, but they like to climb and to try out the plastic slides. At this playground, they negotiate their way around the other kids—the older kids who climb higher and run faster. I sit down on the picnic bench and watch the familiar game unfold, with chasing and calling. I watch the older kids launch themselves into the air and call back and forth to each other, and everyone forgets themselves in the speed and the exuberance, in joy, still playing an endless game of Blind Man’s Bluff.
