Skip to main content

Do We Ever Leave The Playground?

I'm at the playground again. I have fleeting memories of being at the playground as a child - all metal and hard edges - swings, seesaw, slide - vying for my turn, being pushed, pushing, crying to my mommy, trying to play with kids that didn't want to play with me...You get the picture. Many of you have been there yourself.

Spin the clock forward a quarter of a century. I'm back at the playground. It's a nicer playground - wood structures, rubber mats, safer, prettier. I'm a young mom and I've got an infant and a four year old little boy. I now have two focuses of interest and attention - my child and how he's doing out here - and my peers and how I'm doing out here. I see my son casing the joint, figuring where he wants to go, where he feels a bit uneasy, who he will join, who he'll stay clear of. It isn't really about the equipment. It's about the social interactions. I could probably have learned a lot more then than I did about how my four year old was fairing in the give and take of playing with others. Looking back, I'm sure the way he played then, the way all the kids played then, foretold so much about their social interactions as adults. But back then, I wasn't only concerned about my child's social interactions, I was also concerned about my own. There were other moms there, often the same moms. I knew them from play groups, from seeing them year after year at the playground, bumping into them in the supermarket, at the drug store.There were moms I considered "playground friends." There were moms who were part of cliques that I stayed clear of. There were the "solo moms" who seemed intent on being "solo." (Now I realize they were probably just too shy or afraid of rejection and took the safe road). I liked a few of the moms enough to want to move our friendship beyond the playground but it never happened. That is, I never took the first step and neither did they. There were also the moms I intentionally kept as playground friends because I got glimpses of how they interacted with their kids. A spanking, a lack of attention, too much attention. Different philosophies of child rearing.  Life at the playground. A microcosm of life.

Spin the clock forward forty years and here I am again. A grandma with a four year old granddaughter, a four month old grandson. And a daughter who's now the mom, now the one who is involved in this very same microcosm. I see her chatting with some of the moms, nodding to some others who are alone, a quick stop by moms who are grouped together before she moves off. I hear one of the groups talking about haircuts, diet, holiday plans. They seem to know each other well. They seem more than playground friends. It's still the same. The equipment is different, even better, more creative. But it has nothing to do with what's at the playground. It's all about who is at the playground. And the who's haven't changed. Life hasn't changed in certain basic ways.

I am still the child at the playground, the young mom at the playground, the grandma at the playground. The main difference is I see it more clearly now. I understand it better. I would have liked to be clearer when I was younger. But clarity can sometimes take a long time. So better late...

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Who invented thong undies and WHY???

Young women love them. I see so many of them wearing thong underwear. I "literally" see the thongs. Girls, do you know or care that when you're wearing jeans or any kind of low slung pants that when you bend over or even lean forward your thong strap shows? Maybe it's cool. Like having your bra straps show when you wear tank tops. One day a while back I was with my grown daughter (yes, she still wears thongs) and I was trying on a pair of pants. "God, mom, you can't wear those pants with those underpants. There's a line!!!" Now, I find this funny. It's bad to have the bottom lines of your panties show through your pants but it's apparently okay to have the waist band and the top of the thong part show when you lean forward. But, hey, my daughter was not going to give up on my need - yes, my need - for a pair of thongs. So, like all "obedient" mothers desirous of winning their daughter's approval I let her lead me to the underw...

Why are older women "cougars" and older men..."lucky"?

To set my family's minds at ease I'm not a "cougar". But...I just find it damn offensive that older women who are interested or involved with younger men get labeled. And you can argue that a cougar is not a derogatory term but why don't older men who are into younger women (take that as a double entendre if you like) have a label? Why do these guys get winks and slaps on the back from their pals? I think even younger men look up to them. They're probably thinking - hey, look what's out there waiting for me when I get "old".  Too many older women get dumped by their husbands who then take up with a younger model. I know, I know - you can call it a cliche but really it got to be a cliche because it does happen so often. And isn't it downright eerie that so often these older guys literally find a younger woman who looks so like their once young wives?  Is it sex? Do these older guys want hot young babes so they can have hotter sex lives? ...

Five bucks may not get you a latte but...

A while back my son decided to take one of my thrillers and do a clever video and create an ebook for it. He had to have a new cover made and when I saw it I was quite impressed. I assumed he knew someone in the biz who did it for him and didn't charge much because I knew at the time he didn't want to over-invest. Recently I decided to take 3 of my mysteries that were never published in the English language ( if you read German you can get them all! ) and put them up as ebooks on Amazon . I needed covers for all three. I called my son and asked him who did the cover for CHAIN REACTION and when he explained there was this site called Fiverr.com a whole new world opened for me. An amazing world of commerce and opportunity. OMG, what you can buy for five bucks! Not only an awesome ebook cover (check out the three I had done by a fantastic guy named Eddie-all for $15.) but  almost anything else you can imagine. Talk about a "freelance life" to harken back to my last entr...