The Park

Jones loves Spooky Island.

It’s really just a big sandbox at our local park, but there are boulders in it and the children had carved little channels out of the dirt and filled them with water so that they’d become mysterious and winding rivers. It was the first warm day of spring, the first truly beautiful day after a very long winter, and Jones could not have been happier.

His smile first emerges in his eyes, quickly spreading from there into a wide, unprotected grin in which every tooth is made visible. Standing like that for a moment, he then threw his arms up and squealed– his joy a secret that must be shared—and began racing about Spooky Island in delighted circles. Our radiant beast, so fresh and hungry, so nourished by each day.

And not far away some other child’s parent was blowing soap bubbles. Catching the light and glistening, the undulating bubbles rose up and drifted just out of the reach of the children beneath. In their pursuit they sounded like chirping birds at a feeding, each one amazed by the miraculous gifts appearing around them.

In that moment it was hard to imagine anything more beautiful than what was before us.

Just a few hours earlier, in a different part of the city, a Van Attack had killed 10 people and left even more injured, and people were feeling weird. But nobody was talking about it at the park, nobody was on their smartphone looking for the latest update. No, it was as if a spell had been cast and all of us there were suspended within some magic bubble, one that existed beyond the reach of the actual. We spoke only of the world we stood upon, the world we could see, hear and touch. Anything else was too much, or perhaps even a sin, and so together we became the simple creatures we needed to be, and stood in the light for as long as we could before taking leave and returning back to the worlds from which we came.