The Park

Yesterday, I took Ian and his cousins to a park. We had a lot of fun. They played on the playground equipment. I got to visit with Ian's former childcare provider. She's such a nice lady. She lost her husband last year to cancer. I was so happy for her when she told me her first grandbaby was born this year and is 4 months old. It was nice to get caught up on how she's doing.
Going to the park reminded me of when I was a little girl and got to go to the park. I wonder if Ian feels the same way I did about the park. We had two main parks in the town I grew up in. There were several smaller parks but the main parks were Jones Park and Peter Pan Park. To give you an idea of just how much I loved going to the park, I'll let you in on a little secret. Going to the park was even a part of how I was potty trained. My dad used it as a reward and it worked. That was Jones Park, by the way. That one was fairly close to where my grandma lived and had a fun merry-go-round. Big kids could help pump it so it would go around so fast. It also had a big slide and on a hill by itself was a huge cement dinosaur that you could climb in and over. What fun!
Peter Pan Park, however always seemed rather magical to me as a child. I don't know if it was the name, or that it had lots of trees so it seemed liked it had stepped out of a storybook. It had some ponds where you could feed the ducks. It even had an outdoor stage where they sometimes had plays. I remember seeing Alice in Wonderland there. The toys to play on there seemed to go along with the storybook idea. Little picnic tables that looked like fantasy mushrooms and mushroom seats. A slide that reminded me of Cinderella's coach. A merry-go-round. What park didn't have a merry-go-round back then? It had a couple of really big slipper slides that I was always too afraid to go down. They were REALLY high and one of them had a wave in it. The park also had an arbor picnic area and a wading pool. It was a huge park. I loved it when we went there.
I wonder if my son has the same experience when we go to a park? Is it wonderful and magical to him? Something he treasures? I hope so, but even if he doesn't, I do know that when I take him to a park, we have FUN!