I took Little Bit to the park today. Big Sis is at day camp all week, and I’d thought I’d do some of the things with Little Bit that I really sort of never do, like go somewhere, just us, just for fun. So we were off to the park while I mindfully ignored the piles of laundry, incipient mildew on shower curtains, overflowing inboxes, and other pending tasks. Because I wanted to Be There with her, fully engaged, on this day, the second of her summer of Being Two, with her curls riotously marking the humidity and her joy holding tight on my heart.
When we strolled up, there were 5 other kids at the park. I recognized three of them, and their mother, from our little preschool; the other two were in the care of a nanny and wearing the smocked outfits I associate with junior-league mothers, not that I think there’s anything remotely wrong with either smocking or the junior league, although I do have a teeny curiosity about sending your child to a park, as in to play outdoors, wearing an outfit that costs more than some third-world families live on for a year. But I digress.
Soon there were 7 kids at the park, plus my rather adorable 1. And soon kid #6 and kid #7 floated into my range. “She’s SO CUTE,” the girl (age 10 or so) announced. I smiled at her, a pretty brown-haired thing, vivacious. And then it started to get weird. The adults that #6 and #7 had arrived with, standing by the side of the park, began necking. The girl seemed quite uninterested in, if not outright oblivious to, both them and this activity. And she began to interact with me as if I were, oh, her mother. Or perhaps a favorite aunt. Her brother had wandered over to the courts and was watching a man return shots from an automatic tennis machine. But she persisted, touching me, tugging on me, in my face, demanding that I come over to see something, wanting to pick up Little Bit and, after twenty minutes or so of this, telling me that she lived “right over there” – gesturing vaguely past the adults, now seated and smoking. I looked, searching for anything remotely residential. “At the Ramada?” “Yeah. And we get to swim sometimes.” The male adult with whom she arrived saw her gesturing, saw me looking, gave me an odd half-salute. Idiotically, I smiled. He tossed his butt on the mulch a distance away, where I could see the smoke rising. And lifted a can of beer. I walked over to pick up the butt, and even at that distance the alcohol fumes from the pair of them clouded the air.
Oh, sweet brown-haired girl, you poor thing. I’m sorry, honey. I’m sorry I can’t take you home, be someone for you. I’m sorry for what your life is, and for what it’s likely going to be, fuckedup, pain. And I’m taking my own baby home now, because if I stay here, I think my heart will slowly shatter. This isn’t the outing I had in mind. I’m sorry.
