Last week Mom took me to Tower park. I’ve looked at leaves there before.
It was warm but windy. Mom kept putting on my hat and then taking it off. She couldn’t make up her mind.
She put me in a swing. I. did. not. like. it.
Then we rode down the slide together. I didn’t cry. But I didn’t laugh or smile, either. Mom says we’ll keep going to the park this spring and summer. She says someday I’ll be older and braver and like swinging and sliding much more.
“Home is the wallpaper above the bed, the family dinner table, the church bells in the morning, the bruised shins of the playground, the small fears that come with dusk, the streets and squares and monuments and shops that constitute one’s first universe.” —Henry Anatole Grunwald
