.....oy

Letter to D.F.

We are chopping down the swingset.
Bare chains hanging from the warped beams
Whipped lazily as the axe first struck the base.
It was a warm, spring afternoon,
When my muddy sneakers squelched across the lawn
I wrapped my little hands around these chains
And, pedaling backwards, launched into flight,
Legs pumping under and out, under and out.
My back whispered into the leaves at apogee;
My browned toes sent swishes of leaves flying forward
As I tucked my legs under
And, coming forward, my legs swinging out,
I strained and leaned back to try to kick
That one overhanging branch that stretched overhead.
You know the one.
That limb came down in last winter’s storm.
And then I tried my special dismount,
The one I showed you that one time
Where I slide out of the seat as I swing out
And I slap my butt with both hands in mid-air
And land with my feet together, arms thrust skyward
An Olympic Y of perfection
(“He sticks the landing!”)
One warm spring afternoon I tried it again
But I landed at a funny angle this time, maybe.
Or were my knees locked?
It felt like being electrocuted.
The axe thuds heavily.
Earlier we split each rung, all sixty-three of them
(I kept count) with the sledgehammer.
We’ll use them for firewood, Dad says.
The last supporting strut is crackling open.
Mom comes out to snap one last picture
Before we push the whole thing over.
We count to three, and push against the wobbling ruin.
I strain and my work boots slide backwards in the mud.
It resists, pushing back, shouting No!
Wait, wait, she says. The camera’s not turning on.
The battery is out.
We stand and watch her disappear.
The play set skews ridiculously, suspended at an impossible angle.
Smile for the camera, no, no, wait everybody look sad,
That’s good. C’mon, everybody look sad.
Take two, and the whole thing just flattens.

The poem is addressed to a kid I grew up with in Potomac. When we hit middle school, he sorta turned on me and we were never friends again. I remember clearly that it was March 1996 when it ended, because it coincided with my appendectomy. The operation had nothing to do with our split, but I'll always associate the two because they aligned so perfectly. When I returned to school after my two days' absence, he was no longer talking to me. Reason unknown. We spent many years playing together in my backyard, and when I think of the end of my childhood (or at least, the end of the first stage of my childhood), the day we took down the jungle gym comes to mind as a definitive break point. My family didn't destroy the swing set until a couple years ago, but when writing about that day, I thought it appropriate to address the poem/letter to D., as though he should know. For a time my backyard and that jungle gym was partly his, after all.

It was a sublimely masculine moment...striking down the emblem of boyhood, chopping and gathering wood for a fire, crackling the wood apart, destroying structure, delighting in its destruction.

It amazes me how particular objects are more meaningful than the sum of the meanings of the experiences we had with those objects. Of course, I fondly remember the hours I spent swinging and climbing on that jungle gym. But the impact of tearing it down was greater than the force of those memories taken together. Demolition not only negated the possibility that I might once more look out at the backyard and reminisce, or even take a few swings again; demolition demarcated the end of a stage of my life where those particular experiences were possible and appropriate. Taking down the swing set wasn't the cause of this change...it was an indicator of this change. After all, that's the reason we tore it apart in the first place: we were no longer going to use it.

Question for you: have you ever had a similar experience in which the destruction or removal of a particular object affected you greatly?