I have few clear recollections of my early years. But one day I recently remembered with remarkable clarity is the day I learned to swing by myself. I must have been around four years old. One thing that was wonderful about my childhood was the physical location of where it took place. We had a beautiful house in a beautiful location. The flip side of the chaos in which we lived was the bucolic nature of where we lived. Our yard was park like, replete with white birch and fruit trees of every variety. The large back yard had a small swale in the middle that spilled out into the lower backyard which in turn gave way to the field beyond that. When I think of it now I can actually smell the woodiness of that field in early autumn, stark in its contrast against the crisp, cooling air. The lower yard was a large open rectangle, locus of many brotherly football games, and at the East end was a light blue swing set, ruddy in places with small patches of rust. From it hung three white plastic swings suspended by chain link patinated with corrosion that would transfer to your hands like a temporary tattoo. It was here that I many days begged my father to come and push me on the swing. No matter what he was in the middle of, even mowing the vast lawn, one thing remains clear in my recollection, he always paused long enough to give Tad, his pet name for me, a push long into the string of “more, mores”. The swing set faced directly West so that if you were swinging in the evening you were swinging into the sunset.
I still like to swing to this day. When I take the kids to the playground in addition to pushing them on swings I typically get on the swing and see just how high I can go, and for a moment I’m four again without a serious care in sight. I also like spider-swinging with little Ethan and how he tries to avoid me giving him a little kiss on every backswing before we catapult forward again. It’s funny how this activity now though, as an adult can give my tummy a disconcerting flip with butterflies and I certainly don’t have the stamina for it that I did at four years old.
It was on a day around this time of year when it first happened. I was at the swing set alone and through many trials and many errors across many days I finally found the combination of pulling on the chains and pumping my legs at the bottom of the kip. I slowly went higher, and then higher still until the sun, low in the Western sky popped up above the treetops. I was at once elated, proud and downright scared. When I finally allowed myself to slow I jumped from the swing, ran from the swing set to the house, through the screen porch and announced with pride my new-found independence. I suppose this news from the fourth child is less than headline material and while nobody reached for a camera, to his credit my father, squatting to my level, acknowledged my new found independence then came to the swing set to witness the milestone first hand.
As it turns out, swinging alone can be downright dangerous. In a failed attempt to best Jeff Frank’s jump-off-the-swing distance record at Bayside School’s asphalt playground I crashed, scraping myself in several places, chipping my tooth, and biting my lip so hard that it bled for hours. It of course didn’t deter me from attempting again even before the scabs had healed. Another time while swinging at home I experimented leaning as far back as I could and closing my eyes. The disorientation caused me to slip off the swing backward on to my head causing the swaying yard to go white and causing me to go to the doctor’s office to check the concussion.
A month or so later, I had done something naughty (imagine that) and my father had, perhaps too strongly, harshly reprimanded me. I don’t remember what it was I did but I remember hiding under my bed in the area that I had wallpapered with rainbow tissue paper stolen from sister Paula’s “mod” bulletin-board project. I had also stringed up a little light down there and created a place where I could go for such occasions or, more typically to get out of the direct path of the maelstrom that lived in the rooms just down the hall or in the kitchen or wherever my parents would take it. In retrospect I know that my dad’s reprimand was out of proportion because he was probably acting out his unrelated stress and frustration on me. As a parent now I know this leads to feeling guilty and bad on the inside; but at the time I’m sure what I felt was bitter resentment and only time would mend the small fracture that was caused. One of the advantages of being a small child of course is the complete lack of conception surrounding time, so this likely took about a day.
A couple days later, on a Saturday I was sitting on the swing watching my father doing something he did with a passion of few I’ve ever seen, pruning. He would prune bushes as if somewhere behind that sumac was indeed an ancient and valuable Incan shrine. Huge piles of branches would be scattered around the yard and my brother Chris and I would be summoned to drag them, one by one, to the street. I called to him and asked him to push me on the swing. He came over – “but Tad, you’re a big boy now and you know how to do that yourself”. My response – “but I’ve forgotten” was the childhood version of “please just push me.” I wasn’t asking him for him, I was asking him for me. I know now as a parent with 13 years of swing-pushing experience that it can be tedious at times and sometimes you don’t want to get up from your perch under the tree, set down your latte and go push, especially a child who can do it herself. I felt the warm and familiar imprint of his hand on my back as he began to push me. And he didn’t stop.
I still swang alone but when the opportunity was there so was the unspoken agreement forged that late fall day when I was wearing my mandatory Konnor jacket (a red wind-breaker with racing stripes down the sleeves) – a pact that from my dad’s point of view meant I’ll push you for as long as you’ll let me and from mine “I know I can do it alone, that’s what makes electing you to do it with me all the better.”
The last time I remember my dad pushing me on a swing was when I was around 13 or 14 years old. I was sitting on the swing one evening after dinner and was simply contemplating the prospect of going off to the boarding school, Maranatha; equal parts excitement and fear…later it turned to all fear. My dad emerged from the house in his blue jacket; he walked slowly down to me and pushed me for a while. His gentle voice assured me that it would be alright. When I went on to college I found a favorite place to swing at a small lake just down the road from Bethel called Lake Valentine. There were seldom people there and I could go there, swing and look out at the silver lake. I remember it being so soothing. I remember it making me miss my dad.
What I had learned that first time was in my opinion inaccurately referred to as “new found independence” – what it really was was a new-found set of skills. The independence came later with my realization that while I can do it alone, and do sometimes, I can and wish to elect to do it with him. If I could ask him to do it today, I would. That day of opportunity has passed.
This story came to me en total last weekend when at the Lake Bluff playground my 13 year old daughter, rife with hormonal angst, asked me her dad to push her on the swing. I set down my latte, got up from my perch and savored the moments of pushing her, a perfectly capable, independent young woman and for a moment I am nearly 40 without a serious care in sight.
By Clay Konnor
