Wicker chair in the greenhouse. Graphite.
ow a willowy 8 year
-old seeking neighborhood play opportunities
(she lives in a rural home with no neighbors),
my visiting granddaughter was once the 3 year-old who popped up with the early summer sunlight at 5:30
, wanting only my companionship as she chattered while exploring the garden. This morning's
greenhouse reminiscence isn't about a grandmother mourning the passing of time, but
one of thankfulness for the timeless joy found in summertime play.
When I was 8 I lived near Burien, once a suburb of Seattle and now a city within King County here in Washington state. Our property with a house built by our father
in 1951, was an idyllic place for kids to grow up. Leading to our secluded house
at the edge of old-growth forest
land was a slightly sloping gravel driveway off of
"The Blacktop.
" The Blacktop was so-called because it was asphalt, I assume, but we never called it
the
Street,
the Road, or
the
Dead End, which is what it was.
In effect, it was our neighborhood playground. At Halloween, it was where we all bumped into each other in the dark in our costumes and compared notes on which houses had the best treats. In the winter it was where the snowball fights occurred and
where the igloos
and forts were built when the rare snowfall was ample enough. In the
spring and summer it was where all of us met up for bike
riding, hopscotch, tag, roller skating, hide-and-seek
, and whatever made-up games
took place. On summer evenings we could be found on The Blacktop. All the parents knew where to look.Last night, as I listened to the raucous play going on in our neighboring cul de sac
, I couldn't differentiate Ada's voice from the five other
neighbor girls' shrieks and laughter
that blended with dog barks, a toddler's crying, a father's voice. I was thrust back to memories of The Blacktop
on summer evenings. There was Bonnie, Janet, Linda, Carol,
Claudia, Kath (my sister),
Susan, and the occasional invited friend.
There were no boys in our age group, it seems. During the long Seattle summer days, we played hard until
the gray dusk
arrived and that's when Dad would step into our front yard and send a penetrating whistle in the direction of The Blacktop, signaling that it was time to come home and go to bed. Naturally, the whistle was never good news but we did hustle
home or risk being grounded. I was grounded often
, or so it felt, for a variety of offenses and being grounded was, for me, a kind of torture. Hence, the whistle summons was effective.
Barefooted, Kath and I would race down that gravel driveway. By July, our feet were toughened to the rough surface of The Blacktop and to the angular gravel between it and our house.
