The Park

Nearly a year and a half ago, the big park burned down. The whole community was devastated and all of my mom-friends talked about all the amazing memories they had their kids playing at the park and how sad they were that it was gone. But I didn’t. Obviously I was sad because it was a terrible loss for the community, but I did not have the memories of playing there with my kids. I remember taking Gabe there once, but he wasn’t even crawling so he definitely wasn’t going to go off exploring. And once, when Pat and I were dating, some friends had a goodbye party there so the adults could talk and eat and the kids could play, but that was the only time that I was there with Bella. I honestly don’t remember even walking through it to explore it because I didn’t have a reason to.

I wasn’t around for the park-phase of Bella’s life. She was four when we started dating, but between the two houses and the fact that she was so shy and refused to talk to me, I wasn’t the one that would take her to the park. And eventually when I did, there were a couple of parks much closer to our house, so I never once took her to the big one.

I missed out on a lot of Bella’s life when she was little. Since Jacqui died, I’ve been the only mom in her life, but it still gets me how much I missed of the very early years. I watch all the silly things that Gabe does and realize that I didn’t get to watch her being a silly toddler trying to figure out the world. I didn’t get to see her excitement over something silly, like putting her My Little Pony in her shoe or splashing in the bathtub.

I started thinking about all of this because the park reopened this weekend. I took Gabe and Pat asked me if it was a like the only one and I couldn’t answer that question because I didn’t know. I never went to the old one. The adjustment to being a mom because you married a guy with a 7-year-old is pretty complicated and it’s been a struggle to work it all out. And that’s once again highlighted this weekend because I never got to take my daughter to play at the super awesome park that everyone else did.

I’m not trying to make this a terribly depressing post. But life is complicated and that’s just the way that it is.

But on Sunday, I got to take Gabe to the brand new park. He was big enough to run around and play and explore and he didn’t want to leave. I finally made him leave because it was 48 degrees and his hands were getting red. Also, he found a picnic table and was very distressed that we hadn’t brought a picnic.

I’m pretty sure I’ll have lots of memories from this new park.

(Gabe saw this and said “Look at the rocks! They look like fishies!”)