Madrid’s playgrounds have no trees or grass. They have glowing iron slides and a rubbery pavement on which, in summer, you can play “the floor is lava” almost literally. I suspect it is a municipal strategy to give us parents some relief and keep us away from these places where we spend a good part of the school year.
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The truth is that, in the last year, I have spent almost more hours in the park than in my own home. I have done so out of obligation, hostage to a hyperactive child who can only unleash his joie de vivre in this place. Until recently, I used to walk my son around the city, free to decide our destination; and today it is he who walks me. It doesn’t matter where the steps start, whether at school, at our own home, or at my parents’. We always end up in a park, running, jumping, and skirting disaster. Being a parent means chasing your child and trying at all costs to prevent them from hurting themselves.
Playgrounds were created with this in mind, which is why they are fenced, padded, and have devices that simulate a certain sense of danger, to reconcile children’s attraction to disaster with their parents’ insistence that they survive. The truth is I hadn’t noticed them until my son started demanding a daily visitation schedule. They then appeared as if by magic, as if someone had planted the magic beans of childhood leisure overnight.
I then noticed they looked like a prison for parents, with their colorful fences and benches in the sun. Children play on their swinging swings, scampering on the soft ground with a drunken instability. But what is really interesting is to observe the adults. Men buried in their phones, dissociated to the point of astral projection. Women seriously involved in children’s play, shouting with the exaggeration of cartoons. Pushing, chasing, or clapping like maniacs. It is a terrifying place.
I am a shy person. Therefore, the park (a place where you are literally enclosed, with a handful of strangers who end up becoming acquaintances, who might even want to be friends) generated some anxiety in me. But I soon discovered that dealing with parents is quite easy.
Parenthood is a bit like hatred of work or the weather, one of those common experiences capable of generating conversation and filling the gaps of ignorance. In that sense, a playground is like an elevator, but with more space. Conversation flows with the naturalness of clichés, running on autopilot.
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I found it more complicated to relate to the children. My son barely speaks, so I am the one who has to manage his relationships to some extent. I act as an interpreter and answer, request, the questions others throw at him, like a personal secretary or a bad ventriloquist. Sometimes children come to mess with their shovels and buckets, and I am the one who coordinates the conversation and play; I become the foreman of a gang of babies.
I have already learned to manage castle building, but conflict resolution still costs me. The first time a child stole my son’s shovel, I didn’t quite know how to handle the situation. Should I report him to the police? Try to reason? Fight his father? I’m not used to dealing with children, beyond my son, with whom I already have some trust, so I didn’t know how to react.
I was almost going to pretend not to notice, but then I saw the tremendous disappointment drawn on my son’s face: the tense expression, like water about to boil. And I could buy him another shovel, but not years of therapy, so I decided to act. I recovered the toy with a gentle but firm gesture and told the child in a plush voice that things are asked for, not taken. It was the perfect imitation of a functional adult.
The bad thing is that the kid kept coming to the park with an obsessive insistence, only comparable to my son’s. And every time we saw each other, I think he could read in my face the fear of a new confrontation. Maybe I should talk to his father, tell him his offspring has high criminal potential. Or maybe the easiest thing is to change parks, become fugitives from childhood leisure. Take advantage of this long summer break to look for new parks where parents don’t greet me and children don’t steal from me. A place to start over in September.
I say goodbye until then to this column. I will be very busy looking for children’s leisure spaces, forming a new gang of babies with whom to start wells and castles. Flattering other groups of parents, assuring them that their children are the smartest I have ever seen. Building a pleasant new routine in another park, preferably with trees. See you when I get back.
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