We live next to a school. The back of our backyard is a brick wall that marks the edge of the school yard. It is a city school yard, all asphalt, with faded lines of paint for various games. One side has some equipment, not the kinds of slides from my childhood, made of metal and sharp edges. These are made from plastic and painted nice colors and that meet some sort of safety code. The school is for preschool and pre-kindergarten and for after-school programming for older kids from the neighborhood schools.
My office window is on the rear of our house, which means I can hear small voices when they come out for recess, PE, outdoor time, whatever they call it for four-year-olds. These small voices are still capable of surprising decibels and pitches of squeals, something I’m sure all my readers who are parents know well. I love the reminder of the inhibitions of play and not needing to use an inside voice.
In the spring, I hear strains of “Pomp and Circumstance” when they stage a little graduation ceremony. Definitely more annoying than the little voices, but still charming and delightful and I can always come upstairs to the front of the house if it starts threatening to become an ear worm.
The other sides of the school yard are wire fences, high enough to (mostly) keep kids from climbing over to skateboard there after hours.
Some things never change, the craving to jump fences not for destruction but for entertainment. I sometimes hear the wheels scraping against the asphalt, the muted laughter late at night.
The other thing that doesn’t change: losing a ball over a neighbor’s fence.
Sometimes, when I am doing my morning coffee walkabout in the yard, I spot a fluorescent sphere among the herb Robert and calla lilies. A plastic ball painted with soccer hexagons. Sometimes, even, those rubber playground balls I remember tossing back and forth for four square, a game that on the surface just looks like passing a ball around, but had so many rules and exceptions to those rules that I’d be hard pressed to remember how to play.
I used to throw them over as soon as I spotted them.
Once, I was in the backyard mid-day, and one sailed over the wall and landed with a thud and swish in a patch of whatever wild green thing was growing under our camellias and pear tree. I heard small voices of disappointment turn into small voices of absolute ecstasy when I lobbed the ball back over the wall. I heard a teacher yell, “thank you!” But the little voices were my thanks.
Now, I wait and lob the lost ball over the brick wall when I hear small voices from the other side. I’m gentle, because it’s a surprise and I don’t want to deck some kid dodgeball-style with a rubber playground ball. But those adorable little squeals, oh my god, nothing like them.
I think about these squeals of delight over something so simple as an invisible stranger returning a ball over a wall when I read about the war in Ukraine, or really anywhere, and especially the war in Gaza because we hear the statistics so often and the statistics are so terrible. Ten thousand children. I feel nothing but horror when a friend tells me about a family member who justifies this by calling them all “future Hamas.”
I want to believe there is a better way for a country, Israel or any country, to rightly defend itself. A way that doesn’t involve so much mass loss of civilian life. Child life.
But no. That’s not true. What I actually want to believe is there is reality in which no country needs to defend itself. In which no person needs to die over these made-up border lines we draw, this “othering” we do of each other. There’s such a wide chasm between this belief and where we currently are, and this is where my despair lies. How the fuck do we get from here to there?
This is what I mean when I support cease fires and diplomacy, when I call my representatives to stop sending weapons to fucking anywhere that’s killing civilians in the name of defense, when I wish I could earmark the taxes I just sent off to the government to be used for anything but our bloated military spending. Maybe I’m hoping for things to happen in a world that doesn’t exist, but what am I doing if I’m not screaming about how much better that world would be? And we’re not that far from it—if we just keep screaming.
I want to live in a world where the only thing a four-year-old has to worry about is their ball sailing over a neighbor’s wall. No, I want to live in a world where walls and fences aren’t necessary, at least for people (my dog might still need a fence). Call me a Polly Anna or whatever you want, but that’s it. That’s what I want. Are there a lot of “things” between where we are and that version of a world? Yeah. But using that as an excuse to not even do anything? Bullshit.
Wonderful post Erin. Touched my heart in the best way. Keep hoping.
Nicky