Sunday at the park

This past Sunday we finally broke free from the house and took the kids on a family trip to the library (more Junie B. Jones books--help us!) and then to this store to replace the little jeweled box of chocolates we got for L. for Valentine's Day. The dog swiped the box off his side table a few hours after he got it, and only minutes after he'd arranged all the chocolates just so in the box. He's not one to be emotional over possessions, but he came downstairs later that night with a sad expression and a smoothed out red wrapper--from the only chocolate he'd managed to eat before the dog got into them. So we promised him we'd replace the box and, as luck would have it, they were 50% off when we did go on Sunday. After our errands were done, we took the kids to a park downtown--an old favorite haunt of ours from the days when we first moved to North Carolina. I used to go there with L. quite a bit, and push him in the swings endlessly, and watch enviously while other moms chatted and hung out together and swapped parenting stories. There were several moms' groups that seemed to meet at that park in the mornings, and I remember feeling so isolated at the sight of them all together, and wanting so much to belong to something. At that point I was teaching as an adjunct--early morning classes--but I didn't belong there, either. By the time I was done with classes, it was 10:00 or 11:00, and I would scoop up L. from Scott and try to fit in some fun playtime with him before nap time rolled around. But my schedule kept me on the periphery of it all; I was neither a working mom nor a stay-at-home mom. I was stuck with one foot in both worlds, and couldn't claim either one of them. Later, when L. started preschool, I would decline invitations from the other moms for coffee meetings after drop-off, because I was always racing downtown to classes. Then T. was born, and life spun out of control for several months. When it righted itself and I could see (and think) again, I was working full-time. There's something lonely-feeling about a playground, I think--at least for me. When I go by myself with the kids, I lapse into familiar people-watching habits, and my kids run off and play, leaving me to feel a little of the old isolated feelings from those years ago. When I'm at a playground, I feel both invisible and painfully visible, like a cardboard cut-out of a mom--awkward and out-of-place. I still feel unable to fully claim my working self and, knowing that my children's childhood years are rapidly slipping away, I ache to plant myself 100% in their worlds. On Sunday I stood with my back against the little white fence separating the playground (where T. was with Scott) and the train tracks, where for $1.00 you can take a ride around the park in the spring and summer months. L. loves it when we go to the park off-season. He loves to play on the tracks, secure in the knowledge that he doesn't have to be afraid of the train, and that it's safely locked away in its shed, doing whatever trains do when they're not running happy kids endlessly around a park. On Sunday he threw rocks, kicked the dirt, and raced up and down the tracks in his usual way, but there was a halfheartedness to it all. He looked at the smaller kids playing on the playground, and at his sister, who had already made fast friends with two little girls. I was thinking about friends at that moment--my lack of immediate ones, and L.'s troubles finding them. "I love the train tracks," L. said, "but I wish...I wish..." "What?" I prompted him. "I wish I had some friends to play with." And my heart flew against my chest and ached for too much at once: for the days when I took L. to the playground and life was just as simple as some pushes in the swing, and the sky above, and the clarity of afternoon naps and coloring and wooden trains pushed around a track. I ached for the growing pains of life, for school woes, and for my L., who just can't seem to find his fit in the world right now. I ached for the absent friends, who are out there but not by my side; for a friend for L., who at eight feels his loneliness keenly, even if he has trouble changing this fact or putting a voice to the hollow feeling that follows us all at some point in our lives. "I wish you had friends, too," I told him. And I marveled over how much has changed since those early park days spent at the swings, and how little has, too. The two of us are still like little islands--connected in deep and marvelous ways--my son and I. The ache is still there for the things I want but can't have, but also for what I do have, and what's been there all along.