Playpark (near) perfection

They have half an hour and then we have to get back so I can make tea. That’s the clear briefing delivered before the kids barrel into the local play park. I sit down on a sunny patch of grass and the dog does his own thing, exploring, grazing, rolling in enviable delight. My brain wants me to reach into my pocket for my phone but I deny it as part of my habit breaking efforts. Instead I pick up a small twig and begin to bend it, twist it around my finger, toss it onto the grass and pick it back up again. It brings on the warmth of nostalgia as I recall days of laying in this same position – up on one elbow – soaked in sweat after a big summer football match on the old school yard.

The memory fades and I check the dog’s whereabouts before watching the kids in their element. They’re talking to a boy roughly two years older than them and now he’s setting a decent pace, up the big slide, down it, up on the monkey bars, then across the little bridge from which he swings down, around the halfway mark. My two follow him, but they’re not there yet, so run at cross-sectional angles, reading his moves, creating their own little circuits, but clearly inspired by his mastery of the frame. It’s fucking beautiful, so pure and essential. Primal release, physical activity, responsive creativity, innovation – I could go on. They’re alive. It’s almost perfect save for one mother of a smaller toddler, who stands in the corner, her back to said toddler and these moments playing out behind her, doing something on her phone.

This isn’t judging – parenthood leaves little time for communications or anything, really – but it takes away from the purity of everything around her, and I can’t help but feel sad about it. Like we, as a species, have taken a seismic misstep by getting too connected in the wrong ways.

Thankfully my moment passes and I get back to the twig.