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Jeff's Life
Archive
Jeff Stimpson, 39, has been a working journalist for 15 years. He lives in New York with his wife Jill and sons Alex, 3, and Edwin, four months. He maintains a site of essays, Jeff's Life, at:
JEFF'S LIFE
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Monthly Column... |
Child's Play
by
Jeff Stimpson
Yesterday afternoon I had a few hours alone with Ned, and he claimed he wanted to go to the playground. So we set out across 72nd Street toward Central Park, where there's a playground. We entered the park and I told Ned to turn right for the playground. "Naw," he replied. "That's for kids, daddy."
Declining to answer my subsequent question ("What the hell do you mean by that, Ned?"), he headed first downhill for the boat pond, then across a hill of mulch and new grass.
"Ned, the playground is over here!"
"That's for kids, daddy. Want to climb the rocks."
He found a 5-foot-high boulder and took one sheer side in a blur of Gap Kids T shirt, and paused at the summit to find fresh stuff to climb because it's there and it isn't for kids, daddy. He then spied a boy doing the same thing on a rock a few yards away. Over Ned went, spidering up past the boy. He stopped on a ledge that overlooked about a three-foot drop, his toes sending pebbles into space.
"Ned, I don't think this is a good idea without a hand, all right!"
He agreed, for once since he was born, and took my hand and leaped. His sneakers hit the dust with a hard little plat while I tried to not recall my own clearest memory of rock climbing: my accidental ascent up the 5,000-foot back side of Mt. Cadillac near Bar Harbor, Maine, in 1979, an afternoon that again comes alive for me whenever I think about planting my foot in a pencil-size crevice filled with wet moss, with nothing behind me but too much sky.
Boulders are taking the place of playgrounds as the dangerous entertainment for my boys. The old days of weekend afternoons used to feature me shoving a double stroller back and forth across the Park, the boys strapped in, and hitting three or four playgrounds, countless water fountains, and a few snack bars for hot dogs and chips. Back when we still did playground and their jungle gym equipment and when I first saw Alex take a the ladder of chain rungs or Ned fall into space to wrap himself around a pole and slide to the ground, I felt the gray hairs. But soon it was common stuff: Alex went up like a veteran of a sailing ship; Ned came down like a longtime member of a fire brigade.
Now, the walks down Fifth Avenue feature a couple of little boys scampering on top of the benches, dodging homeless and slowing down not for dog crap and busted malt liquor bottles, but only to see how slippery these giant tree roots snaking out of the cobblestones really are. And don't forget Alex's determination to ditch me and Ned and disappear down the sidewalk to find an apartment of his own. "Alex, stop now!" Shoving that damned double all over upper Manhattan was easier, I think. Don't all parents, once you crack them a couple of beers, admit to preferring the kids strapped in?
First time I tried free-ranging my sons was last Thanksgiving. With time to kill in the morning before the relatives showed and the Lions kicked off, I rolled the boys to a little clearing behind the racquetball courts in mid-Park. At one point, I recall, Ned was a speck down by the ball diamonds. "Ned?" I saw the legs on the speck pump as it grew smaller. Alex scampered over rocks and mud, took a spill, accepted a hand up and a brush off. This territory was level, and fair to little kids.
Big rocks are different. Big rocks weren't assembled in some toy factory that can be sued. Rocks are sharp and unforgiving. Big New York rocks are used by other people, sometimes in the middle of the night, sometimes to hear bottles break, or as cover to inject a drug of choice. Big rocks are what you climb when you're out in the world.
A few weeks ago, Alex and Ned and I walked all the way across Central Park, and they climbed every boulder in sight. The boys shot up and over, scampering against the sky. I'd have pulled them down if only I could've caught them.
Copyright 2004 Jeff Stimpson, all rights reserved
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