Just My Imagination

When I was small, the Park was the one my mother named "le parc au bout de la rue," or the park at the end of the street. It was four blocks west--in Berkeley geographical terms, towards the ocean, not the hills--in a residential neighborhood. For my younger sister and I, each of our frequent walks there was a rich and unique journey. I loved the ginkgo tree a block or so down and collected its golden fan-shaped leaves from the ground in the fall. My sister loved a stone deer a neighbor had in their front yard, so every trip to the park had to include ten minutes for her to sit by it and talk about Bambi, her favorite movie at the time. We watched plants grow and die and contributed to the process by picking each other bouquets, which we soon handed to my mother in order to lift the latch on the park's chain-link fence and run off to the swings. The park's real name was Totland, and we outgrew it after a few years. I brought my little brothers there much later, when I was older and babysitting, and we were soon attacked by a protective mother and had to leave. We all griped, but to be fair to her, racing toy cars with my brothers inside and my sister and I pushing as fast as we could in circles around the park was probably not conducive to a peaceful experience for the rest of the parkgoers.

It was all right, there were more parks. Upper and lower Ohlone park were a few blocks south of my father's house, past a candy and game store my little siblings always had to stop at and borrow quarters for gumballs or ogle the new Dungeons and Dragons action figures. There was a sculpture made of twisted metal to climb on, and a rope spiderweb on which we took turns being flies. If we stayed late, the playstructure area would empty and we'd be able to play "lava tag," where the pursuees could stay no longer than 10 seconds on the sand and the person who was "It" could stay no longer than 10 seconds on the structure. There was much rapid flying down slides, ducking through tunnels, and alternatingly frantic and accusatory counting. Then it would get darker and we'd hurry home, because the surrounding neighborhood was not as playful.

There was "the Rose Garden park," with a great stone slide kids could go down on pieces of cardboard--one of the last standing remnants of an increasingly safety conscious city (and country) which once had slides high enough to hurt, spinning platforms in which tiny fingers could get caught, and real wooden ladders with their associated splinters. The structures slowly became more rounded, plastic-coated, and generic. But there was always nature: the gardens on our walks through the city to the next park, the trees at Live Oak Park, the time we discovered a vine strong enough to use to swing over a creek and back.

Parks were part of growing up. "The Park" when I was in high school was right across the street from the school. It was THE lunch hang-out spot and where I went the first day I ever cut class. I lay back comfortably on the grass and protested to my friends, more habitual class-skippers, that it "wasn't that big of a deal." It was though: it was freedom to make, define, and own our decisions just as running on the grass in parks had always represented freedom and escape from the rules of a structured city and its institutions.