Glimpses - Childhood Lost

The breeze was cold against her skin. April is warmer than this, she thought. She sat in a light cotton blue and white spring dress that covered her knees only when she walked. The cement park bench was cool on the backs of her bare thighs. She had sat, seeming alone, for hours now, an empty park of green grass and mottled blue green spruce trees, a charcoal black asphalt jogging path passing under her feet and continuing into the trees. In front of her, across the jogging path, surrounded by grass, spread a wide sea of sand, untouched by human footprints, a lonely oasis with islands of swings and a tall silver slide.
Erica watched as the wind pushed the swings back and forth. She looked up into the gray, overcast sky of clouds, shuddered, and folded her arms more tightly around her stomach. She could feel the last grasp of winter in the air, tugging at her dress and blowing her long loosely curled chestnut locks across her face and into her eyes and mouth.

She glanced down at her wristwatch, a Christmas gift from her husband. He was a wonderful man who was probably worried about her and where she had wandered. It was getting late, 6:20 pm, dinner should have been made and on the table. Things to do, responsibilities of a wife and mother, yet Erica lingered.

She looked at the grass, the trees, her gaze pausing at the empty swings. A single tear formed in the corner of one eye. She hastily brushed it away, feeling the wetness on the back of her hand. Just stubborn memories of childhood, of swings, of sandcastles, of friendships, lost before they began. Why it still haunted her thoughts, she wondered. I am happy, I’m content, I love my family. This was a different type of loss, a hollowness of friendship gone. Her husband wouldn’t understand. But that was okay and she was okay.

Glancing again at the swings, watching them sway in the wind, Erica saw children appear, playing in the sand, running around the slide, chasing each other. She could see herself swinging, pushing herself higher and higher into the air, leaning back in the sun, fingers clenching the links of the chains with her legs outstretched. Reaching for the clouds with her feet, she would watch the world rush towards her, upside down, time and time again with the summer breezes blowing in her face.