He Built Me A Swing
anchors and sails
sinkers and bobbers
fathers and daughters
roots and wings
fish and featherlings
fathers and daughters
silhouettes and sunsets
scaffolds and skylines
fathers and daughters
Swinging:
“They jumped so high, high, high,
they reached the sky, sky, sky.
And they never came back, back, back
till the forth of Ju-ly-ly-ly.”
I would heave back and forth in the swing with all the vigor my lanky four-year-old body could muster to propel me forward while we sang the last stanza of “Miss Mary Mack”. I would swing and swing and swing for hours with my little friend, Jaquline. We would fling our feet out “to” and tuck toes in “fro” still just grazing the large spots of dried dirt beneath us where many feet had trudged to halt bodies in motion. I would fantasize that our synchronicity of sound and motion could create a magic force so powerful as to lurch us from those rubber seats and clanking chains propelling us far beyond the clouds into the void broken only by starshine. Alas, each attempted launch would end in the same. Two little girls would crest with buzzing tummies and fling themselves daringly from their metaphorical cage, soring weightlessly with the birds for a moment then crashing into a giggling mess in the grass. Those summer afternoons would linger on like sap slavering down bark. If summer were a balm, it would be the gentle sweetness of children’s sweat swept up in the breeze from a neighbor’s newly mowed lawn.
When I was seven, we moved to our new “old house”. There, I would swing much more. Dad built me the perfect swing between two hickory trees. Their foliage was so lush, creating a canopy so that my spot was always sheltered from Summer’s sun and her showers. Barring only the most drenching of rains, it was always a good time to swing. My dad built many things for me, many of which had the constitution to withstand my heavy-handedness and abusive play. My swing was no exception. It was perfect. The rope had buoyancy for a gentle bounce at the peak of the upswing and seat was made of wood, so it never got too hot to sit in.
I remember swinging in my swing and savoring each creamy, saccharine morsel of a chocolate éclair. I had been impatient to get my hands on it again the moment after we bagged it at the grocery store. On repeat ,Celine Dion was singing, “My Heart Will Go On” through the earphones of my CD Walkman. I was eating éclairs and dreaming of the day I would be older and more beautiful and would finally meet Leonardo Dicaprio.
I would get home from school in the afternoons and race inside to grab the phone and systematically call each of my girlfriends in order of who got home earliest to latest. I would swing in my swing for hours conversing and cackling until a voice came over the line, interrupting the gossip and ruckus because adult phone conversations needed to happen. I loved swinging and singing, thinking and believing.
The conversations with girlfriends would soon be replaced by dates with boyfriends and eventually the swing dwindled to a skeleton, a fraying mummy, a shadow of it’s former self. I never stopped trying to fly. I had to find new ways though. Some were successful. I took wing on stage in my teens and was sustained by expression and performance. I took wing in university and was sustained by new friends, new sights, and new ideas. I took wing on various love affairs and saw the buddings my own heart reflected through another’s eyes. I was crestfallen and downcast when those people disappointed me and yet I saw hope spring again to nourish the sprouts of new wisdom. There was always a new adventure to be had. There was always something new to learn.
Sigmund Freud was asked when he came from Austria to America what his goal was for Psychoanalysis. Very cleverly he said, “I hope to distinguish between genuine mental illness and ordinary suffering.” Someone else said, “Life’s a bitch and then you die.”
So here we’ve come to another Father’s Day and although I know it’s a mark of capitalism at it’s finest, a holiday created by card companies to sell us stuff, that doesn’t keep me from waxing poetic or jumping on any occasion to be overcome by nostalgia. My dad loved me so much. He built me things. He built me a haven of the heart. Even in the bleakest of landscapes and darkest of nights, I can close my eyes and go back to a place of light, a place where things were good and life was kind and there was something to believe in. The truth is, life IS a bitch but it is also lovely and full and worth living. My dad built my heart haven, mighty as any oak and constant as any pine, giving me roots so I can take wing.
My dad couldn’t make me a bird, but he built me a swing.