Our Beloved Swing-Set

Today's Theme Thursday is Swing. I have two stories to share with you about "swinging." The first about a swing and the second about two people swinging hiking sticks and breaking icicles on Mt. Fuji. Thinking it over I realized that Mt. Fuji will be a separate story and will be posted later this weekend, Part 3. You can find Japan With My Sister Part 1 and Part 2.


"We have our very own park!" we screamed with delighted tiny voices. Our parents had surprised us with a swing-set in the summer of 1987. Considering that we have a pool in the backyard out new toy was placed in the font yard. Two swings, monkey bars, rings, a hanging bar and a slide, we were envy of the whole neighborhood. Situated on a soft lush green lawn and surrounded by colorful rose bushes, blossoming peach trees, a pear tree, tangerine and lemon trees, honeysuckle, and a fragrant white hibiscus type flower-the sweet scents of spring and summer growing up-it was a great and loveliest gift our parents gave us.

Little mothers and grandmothers walking their children to and from school would often pull and tug their little childrens' arms. "Mira los colompios." Look at the swings they would say in a sing-song way with bright wide brown eyes. They would often stop and grip our rusting white fence only to have their little arms tugged.

Our swing-set was our paradise. I'd swing for hours and hours and never wanted to get off. I swung so much that my dreams were infiltrated by it. Wonderful dreams of swinging and flying. In the dream I would swing so fast and so high that at a certain point the swing would launch me into the sky and I would start flying. I would fly over the house, over the pool, over our grammar school a few blocks away only to have my mother bring me back down. On the flip side to great dreams the swings also gave me nightmares.

The nightmare would always switch between two things: being strangled by the chains or swinging so hard that I wound around the bar holding the swing up. Strangling came from kids being kids and twisting around and around the swing. Fingers were almost always snagged, along with long strands of hair, and my mind took off with that. The second nightmare, and the one that would never ever happen scared me the most, swinging and winding around the top bar and ultimately crushing me. As scared as I was from that dream it didn't deter me, my siblings and cousins from always trying to complete at least one 360 degree swing around the bar.

Starting from the upper left corner going clockwise: me at the age of 6 gripping the rings, my sister at 5 on the swing, my brother at 3 on the second swing, and finally the baby at the age of 2 in 1991 on top of the slide.

Aside from the great swings, monkey bars and slide, which we transformed into a water slide the following summer to my parents dismay-we flooded a portion of the lawn, trashed the yard with wet soggy paper grocery bags, which we used to sit on to make the slide slicker and to prevent from getting wet (it didn't prevent us from getting wet), and one or two of us slamming into the ground hard-it was our fantasy vehicle. It was our pirate ship filled with gold treasure we had to keep safe from other pirates, a deserted volcanic island which enabled us to play lava, our space space to Mars and the moon to fight alien scum, and occassionally a battleship from World War II. (Hey, my father watched, still watches, a lot of WWII movies and documentaries and is still a big fan of Ridly Scott's Alien series.)

We had a great imagination and a wonderful childhood. We always, I should say I always found a way of getting myself into trouble and endangering myself and others. Jumping off the top of the monkey bars with an umbrella to see if the wind would catch and lift me into the sky or at least slow my descent to the ground, convincing my younger cousins from jumping off the swing in mid air because it was fun and I did it all the time without getting hurt, to climbing everything in site, and roller skating down the slide, how did I survive childhood? My poor parents.

I was most content swinging on my swing. Feeling the warm sun on my face, the cool breeze run throw my hair, soaring higher and higher into the blue sky, hearing the chatter of my parents and uncles and aunts surrounding us at family parties, the laughter and giggles of my younger siblings and cousins, the swing was my favorite toy.

The next time I'm at Campbell Park I'm going to swing on the swing and feel the air brush against my face and flow throw my hair. But unlike bold young me I won't be jumping off the swing anytime soon.