The World On A Swing

I’ve Got the World On a Swing

Last week Beverly Beckham led me back to my childhood. As I read her memories of a perfect spring, childhood day, I recognized her words as long lost friends, because for me it’s the sight of a swing that immediately takes me back to all the swings I’ve ever dreamed on.

The swings of my childhood were made of metal: the seats that would burn the backs of your legs on a hot day if you sat down too quickly (and of course you always did), and the chains that attached them to the bar above. Almost everything in the playground was metal: the monkey bars, the slides, the roundabout--only the seesaw was made of wood that always splintered in your hands. There were no rubber mats on the ground, just dirt or concrete, and if you came down too quickly on the slide or slipped off the monkey bars, it really hurt. And we won’t even talk about the pain when your partner got up too quickly from the seesaw.

Although I loved the fast rush of the slide and could never wait to get to the top of the monkey bars, the swings were my real love. I remember begging my mom for one more push and watching her enviously when she sat on the swing next to mine and propelled herself to the top. When I finally learned to pump it was my first sweet taste of freedom. I would always try to go higher and higher until the swing would almost go around the top bar scaring me happily to death. When I grew tired I would get myself to the very top then hang my head back and watch the clouds go back and forth, back and forth. The world looked wonderful up side down.

When we traveled to upstate New York for the summers, I would start my days on the swings. It was our group’s gathering place where we decided whether to go swimming or spend the afternoon in the woods looking for frogs and salamanders. Sometimes we played tag and ring-o-leevio and red-light-green-light but I would always stop for a quick swing.

Later on when we moved to Coney Island there was a park near the boardwalk called Sea Breeze Park. The best part of it was the small playground that had metal swings. Whenever I would go for a walk with a boyfriend I would head straight for them. I had two questions for potential boyfriends: were they willing to take me ice-skating on Friday nights and did they enjoy swings? Shatz passed both tests easily. Even though he didn’t like ice skating because of his weak ankles, he took me because I enjoyed it. And even though swings made him queasy, he enjoyed watching me love them. And even though I was 17 and not 7, I still did.

I still loved being given that first push, then pumping myself up as high as I dared. It felt reckless and daring and the closest thing to flying that I could have. Shatz would sit and watch me, usually begging me to come down and then we would sit together and talk about school, life and us.

He proposed to me on a swing. Not on a Brooklyn swing but out in the heartland of an Indiana campground. We were on our way home from a four week, cross- country, driving trip and had pitched our tent for the night on this razor straight, numbingly boring field. It was quite a come down from the sites we had stayed at in the Colorado mountains. But at the edge of the field there was a set of rusty, sorry looking swings, and I headed for them at the end of the day.

We sat and talked about the trip and how I would be going back to Israel soon and what were we going to do, how would we manage without seeing each other everyday? How would we ever get back together once I left? And then suddenly I heard him asking me to marry him and the world tilted a bit. And I realized that even though I had no idea how we would work it out, the only answer I could give him was yes.

So many years later, Steve and I took Lisa to her first playground and her first swing. The swings were no longer metal, but rubber hammock like contraptions and even the chains were coated in rubber for safety. Steve strapped her in and began pushing her gently all the while asking, “Do you want me to push you higher?” And she laughed out loud and shouted, “Yes!” and then laughed again as she went a bit higher.

I found that I couldn’t just stand there and watch, I had to try it strange as that rubber swing looked. But when I sat down it felt like a kind of straight jacket and I could barely stick my feet out to pump. But I managed and soon enough I was high enough to scare even myself. When I looked down I could see the amazement in Lisa’s eyes. When I stopped pumping and came back down, she looked at Steve and yelled, “Push me like mommy!” My girl. Like her mom she had the world on a swing.