It’s been a long week, like they all seem to be. Work, family… I suppose I could talk at length about all of those things. But the more I think about it, as I slowly coast my bike along the riverside path toward the community playground at mile 6, all of that stuff, my daily problems, the things I care about, just seem more and more trivial.
I have to slow down as I pass mile 5. Around here, the traffic always gets a little thicker at about this time. At 2:30 on a Sunday, all of the church families have just finished their lunches, and the hipsters are all due for their turn on the path before drinking time begins. The path is still clear, mostly, but I have to tread lightly and I ring my little bell a few times. It’s not the time for a training pace anyway.
What have I been thinking about this whole time? Money, I guess. Goals. All these mistakes I’ve made, my little hourly regrets, the nagging sense of shame that at any moment some other error will be uncovered. But I arrive, and I know that the local dalai lama will set me straight in due time.
His name is George, and today he is wearing horizontal stripes. I think that his mother should really know better than that; if nothing else, it clashes with his freckles. But it’s clear enough that he doesn’t care. Higher, faster, he pumps his legs and whooshes forward and back. “Hey George!” I call out. Somehow I can’t even say his name without breaking into a smile. I can only imagine what a challenge it must be for his parents if they ever need to discipline him; I know that I would never be able to. “What’s the word this week?”
“Banana!”
Profound, I think. The swing to his left is vacant, jiggling rhythmically up and down as the entire swing set bounces back and forth on George’s pendulum swings, a quite jingle emanating from the loose chain. I take a seat and let the inertia start me on the slow back and forth path. The brown patch below the seat, woodchips pushed aside to reveal raw earth, is too close for my grown-up legs, and I have no choice but to either kick them fully forward or tuck them back entirely underneath me like that yoga pose I could never quite master. I opt for forward, and automatically lay backwards to counterbalance. Slowly back and forth, and the sun and clouds fill my eyes. Suddenly the sun is eclipsed for a moment by George’s passing torso, and as suddenly it blinds me again. As he approaches the apogee and perigee points of his orbit, I feel that classic “thump” as the tidal forces ripple through the steel tubes of the structure.
“Hmm, banana. I hadn’t thought of that one. Why banana?”
“Because it’s yelllooooooow!” he called out, stretching the sound in a strange doppler crescendo. I wonder if he knows what it sounds like. Clearly, for science, I must return the favor. I lean back and let my bottom swing forward as my center of inertia shifts; and when my shoulders are centered over the dirt patch, I lean up again, folding forward to a situp position lest my feet drag through the shallow patch of ground. If I speed up, George can tell me what I sound like. Pump, pump, lean, pull, I accelerate and the thump thump of the swing frame fighting momentum grows stronger, beating out an irregular rhythm as George and I swing just a few degrees out of phase. I am swinging higher now, nearly as high as George but I’m not sure whether I should. I wonder how much weight this is meant to bear. But George wonders no such thing.
“Go higher! You’ll never catch me!”
He’s right. It’s simple physics, I suppose. He’s smaller, lighter, unburdened by the mass of adulthood. I pump harder and faster but that thump thump gets louder until I see at the corner to my left, one post seems to move a little bit against the ground. I have to slow down. But George does not. “Ha ha, you can’t go as high as me! Betcha can’t jump as far either!”
“No, no, George, don’t… you’ll break your leg!” But I’m too late. He’s already begun the countdown. He swings forward, “Three!” and back again. “Two!” and starts to visibly loosen his grip on the chains. “One!” with a final thrust of his legs, and on the backswing tucks his torso into a ball, propelling his legs forward… and on that final climax, just before the moment of zero gravity at the peak of the swing, he lets go, tumbles forward and where a parent might utter panic or fear, exudes sheer joy. “I did it! Now you!”
I forget sometimes why I come here, but in time he always reminds me. The swing sometimes tries to tell me that I’m too big, too heavy, too slow, too old. But then there’s George and he will have none of it. “Jump!” In his bigfoot voice, each word slow and isolated, “You can do eeet!”
I suck in my breath and concede to George’s sage guidance. “Three.” It somehow seems that the first step of the count is the hardest. “Two.” I start to feel a sense of freedom. “One.” For a moment there is no job, no traffic, no money. “Juuummmmpppp….” and gravity itself lets go.