The Playground After Winter

I wonder if, when I am a grandmother, I will pay attention to my grandchildren at the playground. Will I stand next to them and cheer their feats of derring-do? Will I willingly, nay, happily push swings and wait at the bottoms of slides? Will I be right there to lift them up to the monkey bars, without even needing to be asked?

My children are big enough, finally, that they can do almost the entire playground by themselves (a few high-up sets of monkey bars excepted). So I sit on the bench and read my book (Sarah in Little Children), and no longer feel quite as resentful and guilty as I once did, when I had to stalk them across the playground, furiously bored.

But after a week of frigid cold, the ice and snow finally melting, in great rivulets and mud clotted with last autumn's dried grass, my children are in ecstasy. They run and stretch their arms above their heads, swing wildly across the monkey bars and throw themselves down the giant slide in all sorts of experimental contortions. They take off their sweatshirts, though I am still huddled in my parka, careful not to get chilled on my bench.

They are so ready for spring, and so am I. Even the playground is not so bad.