Swinging

Yesterday Gracie and I went to the playground in the center of our little town. I often refer to it as The Nuclear Winter Playground because there is never anyone else playing when we are. Hilltowners aren’t so enthusiastic about climbing structures and wood chips and swings. They like their outside rough, and private.

But yesterday there was another car in the parking lot when we pulled up. And under the band shell a friend of Gracie’s was doing a dance show for her grandparents. We walked over to say hello.

“Does this mean there’s a baby?” I asked.

“Lucia,” the smiling grandmother said, “Tell them, tell your friends, is there a new baby?”

Lucia said nothing.

“Is there a baby, is there a baby, Lucia?” Over and over and over they asked.

“Go to hospital!” Lucia said, over and over. “Go to hospital and see baby!”

I just wanted to scoop that little sweetie up and tell her all the great palace lies about life as a big sister.  I wanted to tell her that everything was going to be OK, and her mama was going to come back to her very soon, and that she was still everything to her mother, that the baby wasn’t going to replace her. But I couldn’t pick her up because I was holding Gracie.

“Gracie, do a show with Lucia!” the grandmother insisted.

Gracie ignored her. I put her down and she made a beeline for the swings.

“She wants to swing,” I said. “We have a special date with the swings.”

Together we headed over to the swings, where there was so much more air and sun. I pushed Gracie as high as she wanted to go, which, lately, is much higher than I want her to go. I thought of a day this winter when we made our way to these very swings by trudging through two feet of icy snow so that I could push her for a few minutes while June slept in the car with my mom. I thought of how hard it was for me to lift Grace then, and how I lift her all the time now and she feels light again, the way she felt before I got pregnant, before I started carrying a baby all the time.

We watched in silence as Lucia and her grandparents walked to their car and headed up the long gravel driveway to the main road.

“Lucia seemed a little sad that her mama was still in the hospital with the baby. Were you sad when I was in the hospital with June?”

Grace nodded.

“I’m so glad to be at home with you again,” I said.

“From now on,” Gracie said, “don’t have anymore babies.”