Listen to this letter while you’re at the playground.

Dear Saturday-playground-parents,

I know.

I’m tired, too.

I’m so tired. I’m wearing sweatpants, which I wore to bed, and a fitted sweatshirt. My hair is in a mom mullet bun; I don’t remember when I wore it down. I see you’re wearing the same things: leggings, oversized tee shirts, jumpers, baggy sweaters, old tennis shoes. Your hair is rigged in buns and tucked inside hats. There are backpacks and sippy cups bundled near benches. Dads sneak peeks at their phones for Master’s golf scores. Rory hit his ball into another bunker. It’s 55 degrees. And somehow, we’re at the park again.

We are here, and we are not here.

My body is here. My knees are here, and my posture is bad. I’m functionally here, but cognitively not. My thoughts are pretty simple. And I crave things like a good song, a highway, the ocean, and my mother.

But it’s my favorite weekend of spring. Everything feels like anticipation: buds, faltering good weather, new summer television releases, spurts of rain, spurts of sun, golf, and singing robins—telling us about the color green and the hope carried amongst the trees.

We are all here, waiting. Waiting for our child to stop swinging. Waiting for summer. Waiting for nap time. Waiting for the kids to fall, skin their knees, have a tantrum, swirl down the slide, climb up the ladder. Waiting to check our phone, check Instagram, or read a book. Waiting for the sun to come back from behind the clouds because, damn, it’s a bit brisk.

We are all here wanting to be the best parent, the most intuitive, and the most playful. Bernadette falls down. Her mom runs to her side and dusts the wood chips off her knees. “Dust it off! Dust it off! You’re all good!” she yells into the wind. But Bernadette is not good. She cries. And the mother shouts to the slide, “Look! A big BLUE slide! Wow! Let’s go see it!”

We are all here, distracting, dissociating, dreaming, drowning.

I stand by a mother pushing her son on the swing. I’m pushing my daughter. And my shoulder starts to get sore. “Lila, would you like to play on the slide soon?” I ask. “NO. I swing,” she says. The other mother looks at me, “We know that word well at our house, too.” And we chuckle. Her son is eating an apple, staring off at the field. The mother looks at her phone as she pushes. I wonder what she wants, like really wants, for her life. As we stand there and push our children on the swing, spending an entire Saturday afternoon on sun-dyed wood chips, with hands that smell like rubber and hot metal and dirty children, I wonder what we all want.

The wind is mighty today. Before arriving, my husband and I ate A&W on the bench with Lila, who ate onion rings and pickles. I kept looking at her dimpled palms on the dirty park table. I wanted to wipe it down with disinfectant wipes, but they were far away in the car. I notice that I can only think of things happening to me right now, nothing more. Do you feel this way, too? I can’t daydream or list things in my head that we need from the store. All I can do is sit there and watch her, think about the germs on her hands, whether or not she’s cold, how she might fall off the bench, if she’s had enough vegetables today. It's a shared experience, isn't it?

I become fascinated with the mom and the little girl named Bernadette. We find out Bernadette and Lila are a week apart in age. But the mom can’t talk to me long. She follows her daughter closely and narrates everything. “Blue slide. Blue. Walk UP the stairs. Walk UP! UP you go!” She raises her hand like she’s telling a class of students to stand. Up! Up! Up! “Do you want to go play over here? Play over there? Go DOWN. DOWWWW-NAH. That will hurt if you fall.” The little girl says nothing and moves slowly, gingerly. The mother is wearing a black jumper, a beautiful sweater, and sandals. She has makeup on, and I admire her. She also has two older kids running around like planets around her. And she is keeping up with all of them. Something about her, though, is internally screaming. Maybe I’m wrong, but I feel a tremor somewhere. I have one too. A tremor is vibrating inside of me. It’s just a bit more reserved.

I sit on a bench while Lila navigates a small staircase. Jake, my husband, swoops in and carries her to a rocking horse on springs. The bench is warm, so I place my palm on it to feel its hum. Bernadette’s mom is still swirling, spinning around her children. If I count slowly, she doesn’t stop her voice for more than 15 seconds. I love her for trying. She’s not annoying at all.

I love the mother still pushing her son on the swing, looking at her phone, and tickling his thighs here and there. I love the quiet, slender dad haphazardly following his bobbly son around in circles. I love my husband, who’s letting Lila go on the big slide and monitors every move she makes with an exquisite, nonchalant dedication. I love the biker grandpa, who looks like he just dismounted his motorcycle and is now happily burdened with accompanying his grandson in a staticky plastic jungle. Even far away, I can sense his looseness, the “here before” energy. He doesn’t offer anyone unsolicited advice about parenting or comment on how cute any kids are. It’s a welcomed, collective relief.

The Saturday playground is the truest place. We all came here to get a break. But we came here to please our children. We are all tired but so delightfully alive, only because there is so much silent wanting, yearning, and solitude. We didn’t get ready to come here, and we’re not here to be on stage. Being at the Saturday playground makes us feel our age. That fact alone humbles us and makes us aware of our existence in a flatlined, grey sort of way. We wonder about each other, but we don’t ask. Small, simple truths come out: How important the word “no” is, how great it is to eat an apple, to swing on a swing, to run. How easy it is to forget who we once were, to move on.

I learned recently that, in French, they never say, “I am 30 years old.” They say, “J’ai 30 ans” or “I have thirty years.” Because age isn’t something you are. You carry it with you, like a book or a memory. At the playground, we have not become our age. We own our age. Age is running around in circles around us; it’s playing out in our tired knees and trying to think beyond ourselves. At the playground, we carry everything in a quiet, beautiful rage. Carrying our age shows up on our faces, shoulders, and voices when we say, “Dust it off!” and shout, “We’re leaving in FIVE minutes.” It shows up when we want to lie down when we search for our childhoods. And then again, if we’re lucky to be grandparents.

The Saturday playground is the truest place. It carries our age and is filled with so many stories. It's a central hub, open to everybody. It's climbable, versatile, and imaginative. It holds everything and nothing. The Saturday playground is a rite of passage, a shift, a personal journey into parenthood, where we are neither in the previous state nor fully transitioned into the next.

Despite that, I'm so happy you're here with me. Few places make me feel seen and invisible all at once, even though you acknowledge my existence with a brief nod or remark about the word "NO." I'm here, carrying my age, watching my daughter, trapped inside myself and this very moment. All I need to know is that you're here too, standing in the wind and the sun.

So, dear parents at the playground on Saturday. I see you. I know the age you're carrying. I'm imagining everything you want to do and who you've been. I see you trying. I see your guilty boredom. We are here because we care. And although it's mundane, the Saturday playground will break our hearts in twenty years. We will want to return here, in this lackluster place, with the wind and the running children.

It will be but a dream and a wish. If age is something we can carry, it's also something we must let go of. And Saturdays in the playground will call us in our later years. And we will wish to be back.

Until then, to my parents at the playground, here's to its liminality. It's a good reason to stand in the middle. Here's to holding something. Here's to the in-between of who we were and will be.

Sincerely,

Another parent at the playground

1. My latest fascination is The Belvedere Guest House for Men — a 33-room, kitschy Venetian hotel in Fire Island (and Fire Island in general). A 1996 story in The New York Times about Fire Island describes the hotel as, “a cross between 'a Venetian villa overlooking the Grand Canal and the faux decoration of a Disneyland castle.” Michael Bullock wrote about the hotel for a 2017 issue of Apartamento, and described it as, “baroque beacon of light, a sprawling, shimmering palace that is so wonderfully out of place that for a moment you’re certain it must be a mirage.” (Feed Me)

   

2. I have this This Japanese weeding tool saved on Amazon because weeds haunt me.

   Kate Arends
   recently recommended the tool in her Substack House Call.

3. I’m in the market for some new blush! This Hailey Bieber-approved formula works as a blush, bronzer, and lip product. (theSkimm’ Shopping)

4. I want to bake this smitten strawberry cake real bad this summer.

5. These hair clips spark joy.

   

6. New York Magazine launched a new interview series called Happy Hour. “60 minutes with your faves, doing what makes them happiest.” It’s delightful.

7. The fact that you can buy a $30 smoothie in LA. That’s hilarious and wild to me.

8. A good read: Welcome to the Preschool Plague Years — Having a toddler in daycare has left me feeling deeply terrified of daycare-borne illnesses. And sick…all the time. This article made me feel seen. (The New Yorker)

9. I love a good list! Especially this one: that covers the best home organization products if those random piles are driving you crazy. Oh and here’s another good list. (theSkimm’ Shopping)

10. Day dresses and sneakers might be my “mom style” for the next decade. I love this collage of options from

    Scratch Pad by The Stripe
    !

11. Just another PERFECT Desk Tour by

    Olivia Muenter
    . This one is giving: wood burning stove, Italian summer house, thick floor boards and shells in tiny vintage dishes.
    Olivia’s Substack

    My desk tour.

    Welcome to Desk Tour, a series where I interview creative folks about their desks and workspaces. In case you missed it: Annabel Monaghan’s Desk Tour from last time. You can also browse the entire catalog of Desk Tours…

    Read more

    a month ago · 222 likes · 15 comments · Olivia Muenter

12. I loved finding this ancient oddity on Substack this week: A “bookwheel” was a contraption used by researchers in the days of yore to have several books open at once.

13. I shared this artist on Instagram recently, but Caroline Walker’s paintings about motherhood are the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. They’re so real and smudgy and colorful and … they get me in the DEEP.

14. Another great coffee table book/housewarming gift buy: An American in Provence.

15. This poem by

    L.E. Bowman
    “Why Women Love Horses.”