This is heaven

By Lawrence Henry
web posted October 15, 2001

This is heaven.

The fall days have bloomed in glory, with temperatures reaching
the seventies by mid-afternoon. The sun shines, and intermittent
breezes blow. You can see for miles through the cloudless air.

Every day after school, mothers and babysitters bring their
children to the wooded parks in our town. Playmates shout
greetings to one another.

Athletic little girls show off their gymnastic skills on the monkey
bars, hand-walking fluently from one end to the other. Little boys
organize their cohorts into "clubs" and carry out mysterious
campaigns of battle and betrayal and loyalty.

The women sit on benches marked by brass placards -
"Donated in memory of Jack and Elysse Morgan"; "In honor of
Esther Quinn" - and pass out juice boxes, wipe noses, change
the occasional diaper. Once in a great while a child screams at
some vast moral outrage, and has to be soothed or distracted or
punished.

Long ago, at the dedication in his name of my old junior high
school, Carl Sandburg stood before the student body and said,
"I can half-close my eyes, and you all look like flowers, so
colorful." In 1961, no one snickered or laughed. Today, in the
wooded parks of our town, with eyes half-closed, children look
like fabulously plumed birds, zipping from one play apparatus to
another as though between outcroppings of blossoms - for the
play structures are colorful, too.

Here, I am truly the odd man out - usually, in fact, the only man,
and certainly the only smoker within a two mile radius as I sit on
my bench, light my pipe, and read a book. And watch. Is there
anything so beautiful as a young woman carrying a child? They
are so strong, these young women, with their smooth uninjured
arms, capable of lifting a child on each side, and then hooking a
tricycle with a spare finger, walking easily to a parked car.

My two boys have their routines. Bud, at age seven, dashes for
the "river," as he grandly calls the narrow brook that borders one
side of the park. Whether he's a born leader or simply a born
troublemaker I don't know, as he gathers up his "club" of
followers and leads them across stepping stones to the brambles
and trees and thickets on the far side.

More than one mother has called her boy (always a boy) back
from Bud's club, insisting that there must be poison ivy on the far
bank. My laissez-faire fathering style mirrors my politics. Bud
has been playing over there for almost two years, and hasn't
gotten poison ivy yet. If he had, I figure he'd stop his river
exploring, and would have learned a lesson. For now, he only
gets his shoes and socks muddy on various failed stepping stone
skips across the brook or up and down the banks, or in falls
from Tarzan-like hanging branches that tempt him to make longer
and longer swings across the water.

Joe, age two, will happily join any group of bigger kids who will
have him. He follows up ladders, down slides (and up slides,
too; he's a good climber), across the "bouncy bridge." He'll hang
from bars, chin himself - yes, at age two, Joe can chin himself -
and generally display his tough, muscular good nature.

At four o'clock, the ice cream truck arrives, playing a crude
chimed rendition of the first eight bars of Scott Joplin's rag, "The
Entertainer." The nice Italian man has a roll of paper towels
along, and knows the names of all the ice cream treats ("You
wanna da peanut butta? Oreo? Da fudge?") but very little else.

Like a flock of birds once again, all the children run for the truck,
and the ice cream man does a land office business. Joe and I sit
on a bench, sharing a fudgesicle or a hard-frozen shake. Bud
gobbles an ice cream cookie sandwich and dashes back to the
river, wiping sticky fingers on his shirt. Business done, off goes
the truck to another park in another part of town, playing the
truncated Joplin rag.

In the week after September 11, from time to time we would
hear a military roar overhead. The young mothers and nannies
and I would look up, and of course we would not see anything,
because the fighter jets flew too fast and too high. In the weeks
since, we still check out air traffic, and we still keep our eyes
open.

This is heaven. We know exactly what we're fighting for.

Lawrence Henry is a senior writer with Enter Stage Right.

Enter Stage Right - http://www.enterstageright.com