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Page 2: Playspace
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Sift
Desktop of My Life
An essay on playspaces
The child's playspace molds them.
Movement aids in cognition.
My childhood playspaces were dynamic, stimulating, colorful, and spaces for lessons learned.
I was both cracked open and put back together on playgrounds.
A swing set was fashioned for me in our long stretch of yard. In Pennsylvania, the forgiving soil bred us cherry tomatoes, sweet berries, lettuce, sunflowers; many Springs spent watching my porcelain-skinned Mother till the plot with her small hands.
The catching of fireflies under a starlit sky, soccer games with the neighborhood boys; my backyard was also a respite after a Saturday's work of doing chores.
Three houses down, a riskier playspace.
Beyond the enveloping walls of my fence was Nyssa Clevenstine's backyard.
We'd pour buckets of ice cubes onto her full-sized trampoline in the middle of the Summer and slide around, almost flipping off the sides on more than plenty of occasions.
We'd build kingdoms on the acre-sized dirt mound next to her house which rose above the roofs of the houses.
Gathering the other neighborhood kids, we'd enact a game of thrones and then truth and dare. I kissed a boy on the summit, Nyssa's provocation.
Playspaces can be painful.
I learned this at school; many recesses were an ordeal.
A field of scorn, of taunting and emotional beatings.
I found cruelness in the world.
I also found solidarity on occasion.
When girls were nice, recreation was a rite of passage.
When not undergoing rejection, I was earning my space in the only world I knew.