I Was Done With the Playground

I walked past a playground in Nova Scotia today.

I’m here alone for a work event, and I had taken myself on a walk around the city. The playground was full of little kids, running and climbing and doing whatever little kids do, while their caregivers stood nearby watching.

And suddenly, I remembered how much I used to love that. That was my thing with William and Kai. I was a stay-at-home mom when they were little, and I really leaned into it. We went everywhere. Parks. Museums. Skate parks. Beaches. We’d pack snacks and head out for the day. They would play. I would watch them play. They’d meet other kids. Sometimes I’d meet other moms. We filled our days together.

Of course it was hard. Little kids are hard. I’m sure there were plenty of days when I was exhausted and desperate for five minutes when nobody needed anything from me.

But looking back now, God, it was special.

And then that season ended.

William went to school. Then Kai went to school. And I was ready.

I had loved being home with them, but I didn't mourn the end of that chapter. I was excited about what was next. I started volunteering at school. I planned fundraisers. The boys had activities and friends and increasingly full lives of their own.

Motherhood was becoming less physically demanding. I wasn't packing the snacks and standing under the monkey bars anymore. I was still deeply involved in their lives, but in a different way.

We were moving forward. That’s what I thought motherhood was going to do. Move forward. Little kids became bigger kids. Bigger kids became teenagers. I would change alongside them. The seasons would come and go, and I would figure out who I was in each one.

And then William died.

And the seasons got all fucked up.

Nothing was linear anymore.

Suddenly we had only one living child. And we knew, for us, that wasn't what we wanted our family to look like. So we made the enormous, complicated, beautiful decision to have another baby.

And then came Bodhi.

I need to say this clearly because I know how easily this could be misunderstood: I would choose Bodhi a million times. He is one of the greatest gifts of my life. I am so grateful we made the decision we did. I love being his mother, and in many ways I love the mother I have become to him because of everything William taught me, including what his death taught me.

But Bodhi also brought us back to a season I had already finished. And I didn't want to go back.

There. I said it.

I didn't want to go back to the playground.

I didn't want to start over with playgroups and preschool parents and little-kid activities. I didn't want to stand around making small talk while someone went down the slide for the 47th time.

I had done that.

I had loved it.

And I was done.

For years, I think I've carried some resentment about that. Not toward Bodhi. Never toward Bodhi.

Toward the season.

Because it wasn't supposed to be ours anymore.

We had been heading in one direction, and William's death blew up the road. Having another baby was something we chose, but it was also a choice we never would have been making if William were alive.

Those two truths get to exist together.

Bodhi can be desperately wanted and deeply loved, and I can still acknowledge that returning to the beginning of motherhood was hard for me.

Maybe that's why I have never been quite as invested in the playground years with him. I take him to parks, of course. We do things together. I adore spending time with him. But I haven't needed to recreate the motherhood I had with William and Kai.

Because I can't. I'm not that mother anymore. And maybe, until I walked past that playground today, I hadn't fully understood why.

I thought perhaps I was less interested because I was older. Or because I had already done it. Or because grief had changed me. It's probably all of those things.

But I think there's something else too.

I had already said goodbye to that version of myself.

I had packed up that season of motherhood and put it away. Not tragically. Not even sadly. It had simply ended, the way seasons are supposed to end.

Then my child died, and suddenly I found myself back there again.

Except nothing was the same.

Maybe that's one of the quieter things grief does to a life. It doesn't only take a person from us. It disrupts the trajectory we thought we were on.

It scrambles the seasons.

Sometimes we're pushed forward before we're ready. Sometimes we're sent backward. Sometimes everyone around us seems to be moving into the next chapter while we're standing in one we thought we'd already finished.

And sometimes the new season is beautiful and wanted and full of love, and we can still resent the fact that we had to enter it at all.

I think I'm finally okay saying that.

Because loving your life doesn't require loving every circumstance that created it.

Loving Bodhi doesn't require me to pretend that starting over was easy.

And being grateful for this version of motherhood doesn't mean I have to erase the mother I thought I was going to be.

Today I walked past a playground and remembered a woman who used to love standing there.

I loved her life.

I loved those little boys.

I loved that season.

And then it ended.

I didn't know then how many times motherhood would ask me to become someone new. Or that sometimes a new season wouldn't arrive neatly after the one before it.

Sometimes the seasons overlap.

Sometimes they come out of order.

Sometimes winter arrives in the middle of summer.

And sometimes, somehow, something begins growing again anyway.