(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.
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