Taking down the swing set

and other bad ideas

On second thought, it might not have been the best time to take down the swing set. Earthquakes, a solar eclipse, second novel woes. A year after your beloved mother-in-law died, five months after you lost your dog (she died, too). Daughter getting ready to go to college, first son already there, almost done in fact. Your youngest, the “baby,” finishing his first year of high school, towering over you.

But these are also the reasons it was time to say goodbye. The truth is, the thing hasn’t gotten a lot of love for a while, other than from my little niece and nephew who visit a couple of times a year at most. And when they do, I have to check the whole thing top to bottom to make sure it’s still safe and that there isn’t a giant wasps’ nest in the playhouse that once sat atop the structure.

Three years ago when I thought about passing it along to a friend, Oliver had sobbed in protest. “It’s like giving away my childhood!” He protested only slightly when I mentioned last week that I thought it was time to let it go. It wasn’t that he still wanted it per se but he didn’t understand why we had to get rid of it. Like, what was the point? It wasn’t hurting anyone. I understood what he was saying but for some reason I felt it was time.

But but but that did not mean I was super psyched to see it being dismantled this morning, chopped into pieces, said pieces dragged to a dumpster like the metaphorical corpse of something I’d rather not explore too deeply.

“Do you think we made a mistake?” Ken asked when it was far too late to do anything about it. “Yes,” I said helpfully.

There’s something in the air, something shifting. Maybe it’s hormones or the fact that my girl’s scrolling “dorm room decorating tips” and figuring out what coat she wants to get “for college.” I’ve been here once already, three years ago when my son left, and honestly I wasn’t great then either. We still talk about the sad drive home from dropping him off, all of us in floods of tears. “Remember when we couldn't talk about Sam without crying?” my daughter said a few months later. But at least back then there were still two kids at home, mathematically the majority. When she’s gone, we’ll be out of balance, Oliver sick of our hovering, and the day when they’re all gone feels closer than ever, a physical presence like the feel of tears against the back of your eyelids.

Whatever. It’s kind of dumb.

I get like this sometimes, overcome by the need to purge, to shed. I hate holding onto things I don’t use. Invite me over to clean out your closets anytime—seriously, I love it. I’ve given away hundreds, maybe thousands of things over the years—cribs and changing tables and toys and stuffed animals and onesies and high chairs and tiny, tiny shoes: all things my children no longer need and no longer use. So what’s one more thing, a large thing that, truth be told, has become sort of an eyesore? All winter long, as I walked the puppy around the backyard, I could see how decrepit the swing set had become. Cracked and rotted and dirty. I wasn’t entirely sure it was safe anymore. I felt confident about the choice at the time, imagined how pretty and spacious the yard would look without it, what I might put there instead—or maybe I would just enjoy the emptiness, the space it left behind.

It feels like a metaphor.

Here’s another one: scrolling back through pictures, I see the swing set in better days. Bright and shiny and right-sized. Everything stable and secure. Back before time had its way with it, before so many years exposed to the elements, harsh New England winters, summer storms. It’s there in the background of birthday parties, summer barbecues, lazy afternoons when there was nothing else to do.

It’s not that things were better then—I refuse to say that. We were younger, a little more spry. We’d gone through fewer things. We didn’t know how young we were because we didn’t feel that young. But those days were hard. I didn’t know who I was. I spent too much time and energy on people and things I didn’t care about. I was often bored.

But standing in the empty space is also hard.

The grass will grow back. We’ll find another way to play. We’ll look back at pictures and remember how cute everyone was. And we’ll push off from there.

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I finished Roxana Robinson’s Leaving yesterday and I am SO EXCITED to talk to her about it at Athena Books in Old Greenwich on April 24 at 7PM. I totally get why Athena turned this an “intimate book club discussion” instead of a traditional event because it would be near impossible to talk about this book without talking about the ending! Don’t miss it! More info here.