The Forgotten Childhood

The sun shines bright on the smooth surface of the railings that glisten timidly in the afternoon. The sun shines bright on the branches of the tranquil trees that sway slowly in the afternoon. The sun shines bright on the pond of the ducks and geese that quack faintly in the afternoon. The structure has been standing tall ever since my kindergartener feet soared to the peak of the pacific blue, mustard yellow, and snow-white structure; I would then slide down the caterpillar slides over and over again like a song on repeat. Today, there are swings where the chains ghostly drift in the distance, slides filled with whispers from the past in the center, and monkey bars without hands grasped on them in front of me. A random tumbleweed rolling by would have completed the picture.
The pond beside the park is a mysterious green-blue and when the sun hits it from above, the pond creates rippling waves of gold that twinkle just for the spectators’ eyes. The shooting water fountains remind me of geysers releasing their boiling steam on a lonely island in the pond. Instead of boiling steam, the fountains add to the coolness of the steady breeze when they disperse their mist into the air that then lands on my face and bare arms in discomfort. In between the pond and the park are the dark trees; they cast a stretched, cold shadow on the sidewalk made of individual gray pebbles. They are different from the rest of the trees around Luchessi: they look like they came out of an eerie forest while the others look like they belong. They block the view from the breathtaking pond like a mask on a beautiful person.
No one around payed attention to the tempting toy; however, arriving to the correct location as if lost, a curly-haired boy in jeans and a gray shirt finally arrived hand in hand with his mom, who was on her cell phone. I sat, I heard, I saw. I should have witnessed a multitude of children laughing instead of one solitary boy playing alone while his mom observed in a daydream-like manner. Luchessi Park- that should be lively at all times- didn’t have a numerous population of children as it did about ten years ago when I played here. Forbidden silence filled the deserted park. The echo of the one child’s voice tumbled through the tube slide as he called for his mother to join in the play. As suspected, she nodded her head but remained stationary with the phone at her ear ignoring the child. The echo sketched a picture of a man calling into a lonely stone cave in my head. The little boy looked eager to play with someone as an explorer strives to find the unknown. Smiling, shouting, sharing- the park was missing important elements that define a child’s playground.
When I used to run and leap about on the floor of the playground, my bare feet pleasantly sank into the pale sand freckled with black specks. Each little grain of sand gently hugged and oozed through each of my teeny toes. The sand- pale and tan, warm and cool, small and abundant- was replaced by an unsuitable contestant: bark. The absent sand used to be the glowing moon, cratered and dented with the running feet of energetic kids who played tag; the new scattered material showed nothing but ignored pellets of wood on a flat surface. They old sand let the little ones act as sculptors, building and shaping anything from lumpy monsters to magical castles. The defiant bark didn’t let anyone mold anything except a pile of blah. The orange-looking, dry bark did not invite me to take my shoes off to get comfortable; however, the missed sand created the realism of taking an evening stroll on a breezy, summer beach in the middle of August.
The tunes of Jack and Jill’s ice cream truck started as a whisper and became a holler as it crept closer and closer until it came to a stop. The curly-haired boy slid off the slide, ran to his mom, and tugged on her ivory blouse begging for a sweet politely. The boy was on the verge of crying until he got calmed down by a bag of chips. The ice cream I bought from the desperate ice cream vendor tasted of bitter cotton candy since I knew the little boy wanted some too. The vendor stayed as if he had a strategy: if he stayed long enough, the mom would grant the boy’s wish and buy him an ice cream. Back in my kindergarten years, the children begged and whined for money from parents, and stampeded and mobbed towards the truck, and shouted and stuttered their commands for the sweets, and finally receded from the truck and chomped down on the ice cream with satisfaction. I was one of them.
The children in the surrounding neighborhoods seem to have forgotten about the wonders of play at Luchessi Park. The park asked for visitors when presenting its renovations, but the visitors replied by disapproving the downgrade. The park’s main sweet source attracted the youth with eagerness, but the uninterested youth avoided the needy source. The park blessed the children with the opportunity to have playtime with mom and dad, but mom and dad cursed the tradition and erased playtime from their mind. The park wanted the ambitious characters of the past to be shown in the new generation, but the new generation displayed the unmotivated characters of the present.

~ Sammy S.