Another break

The days start and end dark now, even after falling back. When the light comes up strong, it still slides in from a fall sun that seems already on its way back down into evening. October and November were mainly a sum of routines (apart from a few wonderful occasions that I'll return to some other time), the new ones from September now old and idling in the lower part of out brains.

Here's a non-routine thing that happened, though. As I mentioned a while back, my son broke his arm for the third time over the summer. Turns out he wasn't the only one with a bone that needed fixing.

I starting playing basketball again last winter after something like a twenty-year hiatus. These were solid pickup games with some other dads around the same age as me. Back in May, I went up for a shot, got undercut in the air, and took a hard fall. I caught myself with my hands and, as it turned out, made the shot but popped a small bone* in my left wrist.

Like nearly everyone (the Internet now tells me), I thought I sprained my hand, and after a few weeks of wrapping and icing, I didn't think much about it. We went to the beach, traveled a bit, had as normal of a summer as we could with a broken-armed son. I even kept playing basketball.

I don't like going to doctors — never have — but after another, smaller fall, three months of persistent pain, and insistence by my usually correct wife, I decided to see a wrist guy. My appointment was on a Wednesday. After looking over my bones, he suggested surgery the Friday just two days away, which I agreed to and underwent.

I could tell you about the early morning check-in for surgery that began with an Applebee's-style beeper, or about how weeks later the doctor pulled the two pins from my wrist with a regulation pair of pliers, the red-rubber-handled kind that could've come from a truck-bed toolbox. I could mention how the ligament he also fixed in surgery has slipped a bit out of alignment, which may mean new cuts and screws and casts later on. I could tell you about how I have seen myself as doctors do, as a body to which consciousness is remotely and tenuously fixed, even though I know better.

But I find myself unsure why I make a show of telling you anything. Perhaps seeing a crease in one's own bone — in my hand, my main hinge with the world — is just the kind of thing people find themselves talking about. Or perhaps I've gotten used to telling strangers quick stories when they ask about my cast and tell me back their memories of injury, ostensibly as a comfort.

Most likely in even this short telling I can convert an explanation of silence into an excuse for not writing, for no longer being young.

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*More precisely and in doctor talk, that would be my left scaphoid.

The City at play

The New York Times recently published a feature story on the city's best playgrounds (best according to the Times anyway). Our own Teardrop Park made the list, which, though it certainly should be on the list, is somewhat unfortunate because now the secret is certainly out.

In any event, for those who have a hard time imagining what kids in NYC actually do (besides slinging their pants low and spraying graffiti all over), I suggest having a look at the Times's slide show of some great spots to let Q and The Boy loose. We've been to the first on their list, what they call the Jane Street Playground and what we call the Water Playground, and the second is where we unwind every night.

Not a bad place to spend your early years, all in all.

Outside is here

The magnolias have begun to make spectacles of themselves. I carry my jacket to the train home. On the way I pocket a few petals for Q and The Boy. The Boy will say they smell like fuschia.

In the city, it's before the concrete has soaked up weeks of heat, and the air is cool, full of pleasant possibilities. Getting closer, our building and the parks around it have been perfumed by the ocean. Inside, The Boy tells me that he's played in the park all day in short sleeves, and Q just smiles and literally bounces around our little house. They're all chatter as I urge them into socks and shoes so that we can make the most of what's left of the day. They want to slide, so we slide. I lose track of how many times. Q scurries back up for another run, telling the world, "I'm faster than an airplane!" Above us all, a jet etches the blue and does seem slower than she. The Boy goes down feet first, then on his stomach, then like he's sleeping, then slicked and sped by a spread of sand. My lovely wife happens upon us on her way home and receives hugs from us all. When the light finally gives out, we go inside for baths and bed. This is what we've been waiting for for what seems like forever.

Outside is here.

The Perfect Time

We head out to the playground after dinner, as usual, and it's always the perfect time. It's been hot, the day loitering still and heavy for the most part, but around 7 p.m. the river sends in cooler air over the grass. Most of the visiting kids have left the day for dinners and baths, leaving colorful riots of popped balloons and shovels and misplaced spills of sand that were probably minutes ago continents or bases or pirate ships.

Almost empty now, everything is for us. Q and The Boy set to work on opposite ends, she slowly soaking herself in the dog-shaped fountains, he lugging an adopted bucket full of sand up to the high wide slide to speed himself down. I loll roughly in the middle, unneeded and unnecessary.

I become useful when it's time to swing, and there's no waiting now. We make a sport of it: we do slingshots and catapults and underdogs, and Q's laughs bubble up and out of her and all over us. "The swing makes my head look up," she says. We stop when we want to, off to explore every last ladder and bridge.

Soon the sun gets real low, and my watch confirms it; it's time to head inside. On our way out, Q pretends to fiddle with the gate latch to steal just a few more minutes before this day becomes something she can only remember. Though I sympathize, I'm on to her, so I go back to scoop her up while The Boy shows himself how he can run atop the park's low wall in his new flip flops. To do things simply because you can. I tell him to be careful, because that's my job, and he tells me "I'm gripping my toes like this when I run. I won't fall off." He doesn't.

This is the perfect time.