Sweets and I went to the in-our-neighborhood park this morning today for the first time in almost two years. The park itself was just fine. They had weeded it, replaced the swings, and cleaned the fence. It did not look like they had yet re-mulched the grounds, so a lot of it had eroded away over time and disuse. We had to be a little careful, but we weren't going too fast anyway. We were the only people there.
She's almost twice as tall as she was the last time she was at the park, so she had to slowly figure out how to re-use everything, "It all seems so much smaller...!" - and she was officially too big to comfortably play on the pre-school side of the toys, much to her chagrin.
She was still afraid of things she no longer had to be afraid of, like the monkey bars. Her little mind was blown when I showed her she only had an easy 1-2 foot (at most!) drop off of them, not the 4 foot fall left over in her brain's memory banks. It took a few times for me to help her hop off before she was confident enough to jump off herself. When she was brave enough to take that first drop by herself, she laughed about how close to the ground she was; that delighted laugh of discovery is the best.
We did a lot of stuff together so she could match up her memory with her new reality. The kid who used to love to see how high she could swing was now super nervous to swing. We didn't go very high today, but it was a start. We took everything at her pace. We were there about an hour and she said she had a blast even though it was different. All in all, neither of us minded taking the time to remember how to play at the park. The re-discovery was part of the fun.
I think life is better off when we pause to remember how to play - even if it's different from our memories.
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