How many times did I ride past that fence ally entrance and assume it was still intact, just beyond the mouth of the walkway? One of countless mazing pedestrian threads that quietly turn off from the road to web behind the green gappy suburbs of a newish city. The opening act of my life spent dragged around these inner sections. And one of their most highly regarded corners is this play park, on one edge of a continent of fields. Against the borders of stretching allotments when sitting on the swings one way, and on a distant edge of the vast grass between the pleasantly angular lines of a prefab house horizon when spun around to the other. A weathered wooden assault course with platforms and jumps, shifting planks, and swinging cyan rope that is rough on your hands. Bars and steps over vertical levels suspended high above the bark impact below. Ankle shocks and summer sweat, scuffing shoes and aching arms, creaking chains and the taste of watermelon.
I was brought along last minute to Ivano’s after school. His grandmother convinced my mum in the school playground. She walked us over wide and familiar pavements with large flat slabs that lay cracked and uneven. We twist through the back roads of tesselating homes and down a path I haven’t seen before, opening out into fields I never suspected grew lush, veiled just off a familiar street. We played unfair games at my expense on the best playpark I had ever imagined.
Throughout childhood, I returned many times with all kinds of close people from that part of my life. Even after we moved out, I would find myself there a few scattered times with old friends from beyond. Still, after that last afternoon sitting on the swings, looking out across the flat planes of growing up, on the edge of an old spot at the edge of an old stage of youth, talking and playing more honestly than I have often since, I have on occasion drifted past that point where the path turns off, and thought of good times.
I found out today it isn’t there anymore. I wonder how long it’s been that way? How many times did I look into that entrance, catching the shading trees, the garden fence alley, the slight glimpse of wide open lawn, and think of being a happy kid? Just finding joy in climbing stuff and falling to the ground over and over again at my favourite playpark. Simply assuming it was still there. How many times did I peer into a pathway to the past without realising that it had been built over? Without realising that the obstacles, the wood, the eaten rubber, and the fraying blue rope, the framework for a simple kind of happiness that becomes hard to come by, exists now only in the warm swimming memories of dry days, long afternoons, and yellowing grass. A much smaller world that somehow contained everything you could want, including a place as wonderful as that one park.
Quit Vision 