Kiss me down by the broken tree house
Swing me upon it's hanging tire
Bring, bring, bring your flowered hat
We'll take the trail marked on your father's map
Oh, kiss me beneath the milky twilight
Lead me out on the moonlit floor
Lift your open hand
Strike up the band and make the fireflies dance
Silver moon's sparkling
So kiss me
From the song Kiss Me, by Sixpence None-the-Richer
That summer we were midway down a playground slide, slipping toward the bottom, where homelessness was waiting in the sand. I was exhausted and euphoric after the most difficult of my pregnancies. I wanted only to rest, and to endlessly hold our new baby boy.
Like most young couples, when we first got married we spent a few delighted months playing house, and then a few years learning that we were engaged in the most challenging of all games. Weeds grow and neighbors don’t like it, hot water heaters run cold when you most need them hot; children arrive and take up your abundant space. Life is not always a playground. And now our home of twelve years was in danger of foreclosure.
Ironically, it seemed we had finally gained our balance as homeowners. Weeds were conquered, the bathroom was sponge-painted in pale ocean colors and had seashell shower curtain rings, the garage was converted to an office with crown molding and a deep magenta ceiling. But our balance in other areas was tipped and as the sliding began, we held tight by turning the backyard, inside its safe cedar fence, into our haven.
That summer. Kiss Me played on the radio; Holly flounced around in a bubble of pre-teen chatter, usually wearing a swimming suit and blond tumbling curls; Three-year -old Devin wore an over-sized helmet and zipped around the backyard in his battery-powered jeep. Tom was building a pond with a waterfall and a tiny gurgling stream. I planted lush grass beside it and urged purple alyssum and silver-green lamb’s ear to spread between the stones along its edge. In the cool hours, so sweet after a hot summer day, a cheerful fire in our new fire pit forced panic to remain outside the circle of it’s light.
That summer I had a tired smile. Maybe that’s why Tom built the swing. Warming a 2:00 am bottle, I would see him working, moving in and out of the glowing patch made by a light on a long yellow extension cord snaking through the night-damp grass. Night after night until one night it was finished and he invited me outside and pushed me high in the moonlight.
Tall and strong, stretching to the stars like a real one in a schoolyard, with shiny fittings and a chunky chain carefully covered with hose so it wouldn’t hurt my hands. He’d painted it royal blue. It was easily the best gift I’d ever been given.
That summer. Soaring high, peeking into the backyards around me. Leaning back to see our yard a swirl of green and brown hurtling toward me, my hair skimming the grass. Laughing freely into the breeze. In the midst of fatigue and confusion, fear-held-at-bay and desperate hope, I’d been given uncomplicated joy.
Summer ended. I had to place the baby in the arms of our sitter, loved and trusted, but mostly envied because she held him when I couldn’t. Before another summer had come and gone, we lost the house, found our possessions and our family in a pile locked forever outside that cedar fence.
The swing was disassembled, and it waited. We struggled, and we loved and we hoped and we prayed. And we set the swing up in a new yard, with a tire swing hanging from it for the baby, now turned four, but it never really fit like it did that summer. So just a few days ago we gifted the swing to some friends of ours, grandparents to three little boys who will swing high in the shade of a large country yard.
It remains among the best gifts I’ve ever been given. It was made under the moonlight with nervous, uncertain energy, and given with love. It was grasped like a lifeline. It taught me a lesson. Life is not always a playground, but sometimes, even in the midst of chaos and pain, it is. And when it is, you should play.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PewVqV5QV0E
