To my lifelong friend currently living in London

SJF:

Today I strapped dear Delia into her stroller and strode straight to the park where you and I used to play. Only this time, instead of staying near the slides, swings and things, I kept going, all the way to the west side where we used to crawl under the fence to get in. I checked: Both fence holes are filled (the one behind my parents' house and the one behind "the crazy people's").

The mounds of dirt are also gone -- the ones where you used to dig so daintily, poking the ground with a carefully selected stick, and where I -- I savagely scratched the soil like a primitive primate, always returning to my mother looking like the proud maker of mud pies that I was.

Prowling the perimeter of the park today (30+ years since we claimed it as ours), I peered through the vine-covered fence to find the neighbors' yards altered by the decades. The tidy half-acre of lush lawn Mr. and Mrs. Y used to prune so fastidiously is now patchy and brown, guarded by two menacing dogs.

The woods remain, where we fancied ourselves budding Thoreaus, concocting codes and composing poems about ethereal aspirations, sibling rivalries, and the fragrant violets that carpeted the ground by our "treehouse" in early spring. The walkways are overgrown. And a rusty swingset stands in the middle of the plot, perpendicular to Mrs. Jones' swimming pool (which, by the way, is gone, too -- but at least that old swingset is there, a monument of our childhood).

The saddest part about my park adventure, aside from the ache that accompanies nostalgia, was the absence of any children at the park on this sunny, almost-summer afternoon. "Where are they?" I wondered. "Watching TV," was my gut guess. Gut-wrenching.

But then, a hopeful discovery: Raspberry vines, on the south side, by the woods! The fruit is green, but it should ripen in two or three weeks' time, when I will return to the park and think of you, my beloved friend.

Much love,
Marsha Grace