Dear friend,
I think about you a lot. I don't know why. But you're on my mind often. Sometimes I'll see something that reminds me of you, or other times something will just float to the front of my memory, like your hair or the color of your eyes or something weird like that. I wish this didn't happen.
This spot I'm in right now, I call it my little slice of heaven. It's a safe place, because I know you'd be mad if I went any further. You know what I wish? That there was a swing out here. The old-fashioned kind, with a wood plank as the seat and real rope for the rope part. The kind that gave your hand merciless blisters when you were a kid.
I think my happiest memories from when I was a child are when someone was pushing me on a swing. Or when I was swinging alone. I had a swing set that my dad built for me when I was 5. It was a wood frame swing set with monkey bars, two yellow swings and a free swinging trapeze. It also had a knotted rope to climb, and a blue wavy slide. My dad would re-stain it every summer with this reddish-brown stain that smelled good in a weird way. That was the official start of summer for me, when the swing set was put back together and ready to go. I spent countless hours of my life there. I would hang off of the trapeze bars and put the hose on the slide so it became a water slide. Sometimes I would put the slip n slide at the bottom of the slide, and it was almost like I had my own mini water park. Sometimes at night, I would climb up on top of the monkey bars so I was on the very top of the swing set and read a book, or just sit there. That's the first time I can remember that feeling of being in my own little world. But the best part was the swings.They were banana yellow, rubber curved swings that hung from nylon fiber ropes. I had blisters that wouldn't go away for months from those swings. But oh, how I loved them. I would swing for hours and hours. Sometimes I would wake up very early in the morning and go outside and swing in my pjs. You can really lose yourself in the moment swinging. It feels like you're flying. I still love to swing to this day. Maybe that's why I like playgrounds so much; I go there and swing, and I can remember a time in my life when I didn't have problems bigger than I could manage. I can close my eyes and pretend I'm flying away from the earth, leaping out of the swing and floating on towards space.
I don't have that swing set anymore. My parents sold it to a very nice couple with a little daughter when I was fourteen. They carefully wrapped the swings and rope and trapeze bar up and put them in boxes, then that nice man and his wife rented a flatbed truck and hauled the frame away. My parents planted a garden over the spot where the swing set sat, because all the grass was dead around it. I can remember standing on the porch when they were hauling it away, picking up the frame and carrying it away, out of my life forever. I've never cried so hard at the loss of one of my childhood toys. For the first time ever, I understood the meaning of the phrase “losing your innocence.”
I never knew their names, the people who bought the swing set. Their little girl had brown hair and was full of energy just like I was at that age. I hope the swing set brought her just as much joy as it did me. I wonder if she flipped upside down on the trapeze bar like I did, or if she sat on top of the monkey bars and wondered what it would be like to visit space, as I did. I wonder if she swung so high that she was afraid she'd flip right over the top, like I sometimes did. I wonder if she ever closed her eyes and just swung back and forth and back and forth, letting it lull away the world like I did everyday. And I wonder if her parents sold the swing set to another family. I wonder if they packed it up and carried it away, let another family have it like ours did for her. I wonder if she cried when the swing set left her life, or whether she just simply outgrew it. Maybe her parents tore it down and turned it into firewood when she became more interested in cars and boys and phone calls. Maybe the swings started to rot, and the slide started to crack. Maybe the stain job my dad had so lovingly kept up for ten years started to chip and fade from the sun. I hope not. I hope it went on to make another child happy. I hope it's still living, maybe in its fourth or fifth home, still making children feel like they're flying or like they're sitting on top of the world.
I want to tell that girl, and all the children who think they've outgrown childhood, to just slow down. Because one day you're going to look back and miss those simple times. When you have bills and taxes and babies and a mortgage, you're going to wish life was just as easy as taking off your pj pants and putting on shorts and running outside to play. You're going to miss that strong, sturdy swing set. You're going to know too much; you're going to be too jaded. I want to tell kids to savor those times before their hearts have been broken and they find out that all people aren't nice. It's a different experience when you sit on a swing now as an adult. You smile because you're nostalgic, and because you're sad. Sad because you know now that the world is a much different place than when you were young. Sadness for the kids who are kids in the present, because one day they will be you, an adult sitting on a swing, sad because kids don't realize how pure and innocent and wonderful they are. They have zero knowledge of the world that awaits them; they're carefree and nothing bothers them. Parents and adults really do a good job of hiding this cruel reality from children; when you finally realize what an ugly place the world can be, it's a shock.
Sometimes when I'm in bed at night, I wish I could be little again, just for one day. I could eat shitty, sugary cereal for breakfast, and a grilled cheese for lunch. I wouldn't have to worry about calories or saturated transfats or clothes not fitting right. My mom could pick out my outfit and fix my hair, and I could go play outside until the sun set and the mosquitos started to eat me alive. I could write on the driveway with colored chalk and make water balloons and drink water straight out of the hose. And after I scrubbed the dirt off of my feet in the bath at night, I would fall into bed, exhausted. No nightmares would haunt me; I would fall straight to sleep and get a full eight hours, to be ready to play all over again the next day.
But the world doesn't work that way. Everything becomes increasingly complicated. But maybe that's why we have our carefree childhoods full of imagination and play, to remind us that life is constant and ever-changing, and the every day will be a harder challenge than the one that came before it. I see that quote a lot, the one that goes "no one said it was going to be easy, but they did say it would be worth it.”
Is it? Is it ultimately worth it? People work their asses off their entire lives for such little payoff. We're told that if we work hard, do everything right, then we'll be rewarded. From a young age, we're spoon-fed this Nora Ephron, rom-com, glittery, fluffy bullshit that if we just sit around and look pretty enough, then we'll get everything we've ever wanted. Love, money, house, in short, the mythical “American dream.”
I know you don't believe in any of that. I know you don't believe in any of that shit, like karma or serendipity or destinies, none of that Hallmarky, new age, Lifetime Television for Women crap. You're sensible and practical. While I look for phrases and meanings to define what's happened to me, you simply accept your fate and move on.
I don't really know where I was going with this. Sometimes I think of things I want to say to you, but then I remember that we aren't friends like we used to be anymore and I can't just text you random things out of the blue. Sometimes I feel like you're up on a shelf looking down at me, not helping while I struggle to get up there with you. We used to be sitting on the same shelf, looking each other in the eyes.
Sometimes I look at your eyes and wonder why I never noticed how beautiful the color was before. Why I never noticed how soft the skin on your cheeks was, or why I never noticed what a good driver you are. I realized everything far too late.
I wish I could press rewind. But I know I can't. And I'm crying now, but not because I can't fix my mistakes, but because what I want more than anything in the world is for you to be sitting right here with me, right now. I want a real hug, not the forced kind you've been giving me lately. I want to press my forehead into your neck and smell you and hug you tight, and I want you to make everything go away, just for a little bit. I want you to tell me my eyes are beautiful because you're the only person who has ever told me that. I want you to tell me that my hair smells nice, and my perfume makes you think of me, just like you always used to. I'm crying these hot, awful tears because I would give absolutely anything to go back to those days.
Sometimes if I close my eyes, I can pretend, like when I was little. I close my eyes and pretend you are here. The old you. You ask if I'm cold, then tell me I need to get to bed. You would walk me all the way back up to my door. I would tell you bye, and we'll talk later. Then we'd both sleep. And I could dream.
So Goodnight, friend. Love you, friend.
Always, me
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