"Amherst Massachusetts is reading the newspaper when she looks out and notices Tucson Arizona's slim body dancing between the trees. She thinks about New York City's cinnamon breath and raw cologne. Amherst Massachusetts wraps her brown thick hair up in a wool hat, her neck in a scarf. She lets the roads take her home, following the leaves as they fall to the silence of the street. She places her hands on her hips and feels the roundness the year has brought them."

- Jaimee Kuperman's "Amherst Massachusetts"

grandmothers and park benches

(after Mark Halliday's "Divorced Fathers and Pizza Crusts")

Grandmothers and park benches share a natural

connection. The grandmother does not walk or stand

easily. She wants her grandchild to run free and not be afraid of

bumping over this or that in the house. The visit is supposed to be fun.

Shy at first, the child stays back with her grandmother, watching

the older, bigger kids play tag in the grass. Then a shout: “Amy!”

and like a gunshot the kid fires off into the crowd, reunites with a friend

from school, and the grandmother is by herself on the bench.

Kids love swings. For some reason involving height and the feeling of flying

with minimal effort, kids prefer the swings over the slide or the monkey bars.

The grandmother sits in her camel coat, the one with the deep

pockets, and trains her eyes on the motion of the kid’s legs pumping back

and forth through the air. With each new push they rise higher and higher

until the canvas shoes look as if they’re about to touch the sky.

The grandmother doesn’t want to forget this image of the child,

enough has been forgotten already. Some minutes pass, but it’s a different story

with your knees and back. You try to stretch, lift one foot off the ground and then

alternate with the other, yet the tingling sensation won’t go. Soon there you are

stuck on the park bench, thighs and buttocks numb to the bone. All this is natural.

There’s no sinister joke being played. Meanwhile the kid and the kid’s friend

have moved on to a game of hopscotch. They’re having a pretty good time.

Amy will relay the news to her mother who’ll trust that grandma is doing okay

for now. So the afternoon outing’s a success. Now the grandmother

shifts her weight from side to side and prepares to take the first, hard

step. Gripping the metal armrest, she lifts wooden limbs which are not

stumps rotting in a forest. Acceptance of what’s considered natural

permeates the chilled autumn air so completely there’s no room

for anything else. Now she’s walking slowly across the playground and people

move aside allowing her to pass, of course they do, she’s a grandmother.