Month: February 2012

Over the past few weeks, swings have grown on my campus. Overnight, they emerged: simple red planks of wood hanging on long white ropes from sturdy branches of trees, anonymous and silly. They happened everywhere, eight or ten of them strung about my small school. After trying a few of them, I found that one, in particular, was a perfect swing—a bit challenging to start out on, but once it got going it would soar to the height of the big tree’s branches. I put stirring music on my headphones and smiled benignly at the amused stares of onlookers, closed my eyes, remembered my childhood’s afternoon school recesses. The upswing felt like flying, and the backswing felt like bowing to the sky.