{"id":9,"date":"2022-05-12T13:35:47","date_gmt":"2022-05-12T17:35:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/writers-on-writing\/?p=9"},"modified":"2022-05-20T15:27:31","modified_gmt":"2022-05-20T19:27:31","slug":"playground","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/writers-on-writing\/playground\/","title":{"rendered":"Playground"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

by Anna Huber ’24<\/em><\/h1>\n<\/header>\n
\n

A pile of teen moms is sprawled all over the grass. They\u2019re a diverse bunch–white, black, hispanic–but it\u2019s hard to imagine them not being friends, the way they laugh so easily together. Mothers in arms.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s nice that it\u2019s summer, with school out, so I don\u2019t have to time my visits to the weekends and afternoons like in the spring and fall. I sit on a bench next to my stroller with my baby, who\u2019s too young to do anything but sit in his stroller.\u00a0 I flit my eyes between my daughter and them. They carry themselves with this intoxicating confidence that most young people don\u2019t really have. Even the really tiny girls look sturdier than my teen boys. My boys have stronger, broader shoulders, but they slump, sag, slouch. The moms sit up straight. In a Darwinian sense, they\u2019ve got nothing left to prove, their legacies latched firmly to their breasts or the monkey bars.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a fifth girl, laughing along with them, with no baby yet but a belly at least seven months swollen.<\/p>\n

\u201cReady to burst,\u201d says my daughter unkindly about the girl, who is sort of hefty.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, pregnant women and sunsets are never ugly.\u201d<\/p>\n

My daughter blinks and runs back to the slide.<\/p>\n

The girl really is beautiful. She looks just like the weather today–dewey, heavy, and pregnant–she with her baby and the air with those gallons of moisture so thick that when it rains the droplets won\u2019t even seem like they came from the clouds.\u00a0 They will just erupt from the air they hang in and fall down onto us.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want it to rain just yet, although it looks like everybody else does.\u00a0 Even the most feral kids are weighed down by the dense humidity, climbing slowly over the jungle gym. I\u2019m hot too.\u00a0 My forehead is slick and my dress hangs wet and heavy in the armpits.\u00a0 Even the backs of my knees are sweating. I will welcome the rain when it comes and breaks the fever of the summer, but when it comes I know everyone will scatter and leave, even though it will be one of those summer rains that only lasts a little while.\u00a0 And I will have to wait until tomorrow to see the teen moms.<\/p>\n

When they throw their heads back and laugh, I can see their necks shining too. I feel for the pregnant girl, because I know that everything in that trimester is uncomfortable, especially the heat. I see how red her forehead is, and how she isn\u2019t as quick to laugh as the others. A deep grumble comes out of the distance and everyone in the playground looks up at the sky as if they might be able to see the thunder. A few people start to pack up their diaper bags, summon their kids from the metal jungle gym. The girls help the pregnant one to her feet.<\/p>\n

In a split second, the rain starts to fall down in quick, solid droplets. I will have to come back tomorrow. I flip the plastic cover over my Liam\u2019s stroller and yell for my daughter, who would play in the rain all day if I let her. She whines, already cranky from the humidity, but she follows me as we start to exit, and soon enough forgets the playground ever existed as she breaks into a sprint, the rain slapping her body, her sneakers slapping the pavement.<\/p>\n

As I shout at her to slow down, I look over my shoulder at the teen moms leaving the park and glance at the pregnant one, who finally seems to smile easily. The air is at least five degrees cooler now. I\u2019m happy she is getting some relief.<\/p>\n

I let my daughter run ahead as soon as we can see our apartment building. In those few blocks, the rain has already started to slow from a torrent into a drizzle. I lift up my baby\u2019s plastic cover carefully so that the rain won\u2019t get in and I wipe some of the condensation from it so I can see his beautiful face. He\u2019s probably the only dry person in the neighborhood.<\/p>\n

I imagine what it might be like to sit in that stroller, totally still but lulled by the outward movement of the stroller, the rain drumming on the plastic. I watch his wide-open eyes follow the heavy raindrops until the cover fogs up again.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Anna Huber ’24 A pile of teen moms is sprawled all over the grass. They\u2019re a diverse bunch–white, black, hispanic–but it\u2019s hard to imagine them not being friends, the way they laugh so easily together. Mothers in arms. It\u2019s nice that it\u2019s summer, with school out, so I don\u2019t have to time my visits…Read more Playground<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3782,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction-very-short-stories"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/writers-on-writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/writers-on-writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/writers-on-writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/writers-on-writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3782"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/writers-on-writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/writers-on-writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":546,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/writers-on-writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions\/546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/writers-on-writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/writers-on-writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/writers-on-writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}