The first thing that hits me is the shrieking. Thinking back to when I was a child, yes, I remember that shrieking was somehow an integral part of play. As an adult it simply makes me cringe. The sound seems to bypass the auditory organs and perform a direct sonic assault to my brain.
The playground is indoor, a sunken pit in the mall where dozens of children run, climb, and jump on enormous fiberglass breakfast food. Jack’s Giant would love this place, sausage and eggs and the bones of the modern American child on the side, hold the butter. It is a semi-controlled anarchy, where it is not might that makes right, but rather whoever can scream most successfully for their mother. That parent then comes down in self-righteous wrath on whoever is standing within a five foot radius of the screamer, and whatever marginal peace previously existed is restored. The floor is maroon industrial carpet, and oddly squishy underfoot due to the padding – stepping on it brings unpleasant associations with soft, thick mud.
Ages range here, from infants left to lie in strollers or carrying baskets to pre-adolescents of eight or even ten. The greatest population is the small children, between three and five, those who are the least self-conscious. There are moments, between the outbreaks of joyous shrieking, of breathtaking tenderness; a little girl gently touching the hair of another, a little boy kissing an infant’s cheek. But more often seem to be the acts of shocking cruelty. A little girl shoves another off of the giant sausage links just to make her cry, a little boy declares that a dark-skinned boy with the distinctive headwear of a Sikh looks funny and can’t play with his group. Our tribal roots come out in this place, and the children seem to instinctively form themselves into shifting packs that claim territory and then defend it against all comers. The Waffle Clan will not tolerate a member of the Banana Clan on their waffle. The exception seems to be the very young – a crawling child can go where it pleases and is welcomed among all the clans. Clan memberships are fluid and fleeting, to ask to join a clan is to be accepted, unless of course you look funny. The girl with Downs’ doesn’t seem to be able to find anywhere or anyone to play with – she sits, inconsolable, on the floor in the middle and sobs quietly until her mother picks her up and takes her away.
Mothers sit on the padded benches that ring the depression, gossiping in small clumps while keeping an occasional eye on the screaming herd. Most look a little haggard, most are not much older than I am. There is a certain desperation in what I can make out of their conversations – they begin with political issues and current news, but they always devolve back to their offspring’s accomplishments, tragedies, and how hard their lives are.
There are no men here. None of the older children are boys.
This seems to be Women’s Country, for better or worse, and I wonder if men would be tolerated here, or if a man’s mere presence would label him a predator in the media-panicked modern mother’s mind. The population changes rapidly – I’ve been here for about an hour and very few, if any, of the mothers who eyed me so suspiciously when I entered sans child and sat down with my notebook and pen are left. I wonder if the new mothers who have arrived think that one of the kids is mine, that I am one of them. I can’t help but cringe, thinking that’s so, wishing there was a way my nulliparous state could be discerned. The feeling surprises me; I had not thought my feelings on motherhood ran so deep. It’s not that I wish a confrontation, rather it’s a deep need to say ‘I am not like you. Do not assume that I belong here’.
But I have strayed from what I set out to do – I have spent almost no time in describing this place to you. So I begin again, thus:
I walk down a sloping ramp, carpeted in that industrial maroon carpet that leaves those odd patterns imprinted in your skin if you sit on it in shorts for too long. At the bottom of the ramp I step onto a heavy-padded floor covered in more of the same carpet that gives unpleasantly under one’s weight. Children run and scream around my legs, their bright-coloured clothing and jerky movements bringing a flock of tiny parrots to mind. Huge pieces of fiberglass food gleam under the lights; a seven foot half-peeled banana whose petals of peel form slides, a huge square waffle complete with pat of melting butter and shiny wet syrup, two enormous sized fried eggs, log-sized links of sausage snaking across the floor in a train. Mothers move with ponderous steps among the foodstuffs and darting flocks of kids, indolently refereeing when there is too prolonged a shriek. More mothers sit on padded benches on the perimeter of the pit, chatting away, the polished marble of the walls rising behind their heads. A Giant’s Breakfast for the morbid and fairytale of mind.