Child's Play
by
Jeff Stimpson
Yesterday afternoon I had a few hours alone with
Ned, and he claimed he wanted to go to the playground. So we set out
across 72nd Street toward Central Park, where there's a playground.
We entered the park and I told Ned to turn right for the playground.
"Naw," he replied. "That's for kids, daddy."
Declining to answer my subsequent question ("What
the hell do you mean by that, Ned?"), he headed first downhill for
the boat pond, then across a hill of mulch and new grass.
"Ned, the playground is over here!"
"That's for kids, daddy. Want to climb the rocks."
He found a 5-foot-high boulder and took one sheer
side in a blur of Gap Kids T shirt, and paused at the summit to find
fresh stuff to climb because it's there and it isn't for kids,
daddy. He then spied a boy doing the same thing on a rock a few
yards away. Over Ned went, spidering up past the boy. He stopped on
a ledge that overlooked about a three-foot drop, his toes sending
pebbles into space.
"Ned, I don't think this is a good idea without a
hand, all right!"
He agreed, for once since he was born, and took my
hand and leaped. His sneakers hit the dust with a hard little
plat while I tried to not recall my own clearest memory of rock
climbing: my accidental ascent up the 5,000-foot back side of Mt.
Cadillac near Bar Harbor, Maine, in 1979, an afternoon that again
comes alive for me whenever I think about planting my foot in a
pencil-size crevice filled with wet moss, with nothing behind me but
too much sky.
Boulders are taking the place of playgrounds as
the dangerous entertainment for my boys. The old days of weekend
afternoons used to feature me shoving a double stroller back and
forth across the Park, the boys strapped in, and hitting three or
four playgrounds, countless water fountains, and a few snack bars
for hot dogs and chips. Back when we still did playground and their
jungle gym equipment and when I first saw Alex take a the ladder of
chain rungs or Ned fall into space to wrap himself around a pole and
slide to the ground, I felt the gray hairs. But soon it was common
stuff: Alex went up like a veteran of a sailing ship; Ned came down
like a longtime member of a fire brigade.
Now, the walks down Fifth Avenue feature a couple
of little boys scampering on top of the benches, dodging homeless
and slowing down not for dog crap and busted malt liquor bottles,
but only to see how slippery these giant tree roots snaking out of
the cobblestones really are. And don't forget Alex's determination
to ditch me and Ned and disappear down the sidewalk to find an
apartment of his own. "Alex, stop now!" Shoving that damned
double all over upper Manhattan was easier, I think. Don't all
parents, once you crack them a couple of beers, admit to preferring
the kids strapped in?
First time I tried free-ranging my sons was last
Thanksgiving. With time to kill in the morning before the relatives
showed and the Lions kicked off, I rolled the boys to a little
clearing behind the racquetball courts in mid-Park. At one point, I
recall, Ned was a speck down by the ball diamonds. "Ned?" I saw the
legs on the speck pump as it grew smaller. Alex scampered over rocks
and mud, took a spill, accepted a hand up and a brush off. This
territory was level, and fair to little kids.
Big rocks are different. Big rocks weren't
assembled in some toy factory that can be sued. Rocks are sharp and
unforgiving. Big New York rocks are used by other people, sometimes
in the middle of the night, sometimes to hear bottles break, or as
cover to inject a drug of choice. Big rocks are what you climb when
you're out in the world.
A few weeks ago, Alex and Ned and I walked all the
way across Central Park, and they climbed every boulder in sight.
The boys shot up and over, scampering against the sky. I'd have
pulled them down if only I could've caught them.
Copyright 2004 Jeff Stimpson, all rights reserved
