American Family (Cameo)

In the park. This little family. I'm relaxing at my usual spot, the swinging bench that overlooks the playground. I can't estimate the distance from my bench to the playground; when someone has my bench and I have to sit at the one beside the playground, it is a walk of perhaps thirty seconds from my bench to the other.

You can walk quite a number of steps in thirty seconds. Okay. So maybe it is ten seconds. I don't count. I'm usually concentrating on not spilling my coffee (a lost cause) and otherwise not chewing out the people who have stolen my bench.

Just kidding.

The individuals in the little playground are perhaps six inches high, to my estimation--maybe eight or ten.

Not very good at estimating there, either.

Most of the dog walkers are absent--the neighborhood 'club' meets later in the evening on the weekdays and likely is just a hodgepodge on the weekend; other families have come and gone, perhaps; it is late morning on a Sunday; I will go to the park four or five times through the stretch of the day. I watch the trees and park life and people who pass by as lazy as an old man staring into a fire: anything that moves catches the eye.

I noted them first as they were dissembling from their car -- one of those standard SUV machines. Solid iconic middleclass - and yes, that could represent several different groupings. These had money. They were educated - not the sort that gains the degree but thereafter, you can never really tell it. They were intelligent.

Mom had the baby in one of those American versions of the ancient sling: gussied up with padding and straps and label and fasteners; a baby was as secure in them in a mother's holding as invention could beguile the thinking; she sat up facing her mother and against her tummy, her hands and arms hanging squat against the outside of the contraption, largely unmoving.

I saw them at first through that haze mentioned above, not yet cognizant of anything but the roving across my vision of some new tidbit to peruse, dismiss, glance at again.

And then one of the wee ones fell - a small boy, and he hit hard. Flat and full and across the pavement, without defense -- a belly-buster -- perhaps he had been running (it had that force) and caught his toe on a snag in the pavement. His wails could be heard all the way across the distance they yet were, having parked at the curve beyond my bench.

Mama stooped to comfort him. Her attention was thorough and that of any mother comforting a small boy who truly hurt; I cannot distinguish even now what made me wonder about the small drama. By then, I think, the third wee creature was in sight -- that agitated fuss of movement of a youngster who is another cog in the wheel turning - the moment itches and his darting about becomes the dance that scratches.

The cameo is like that. Random, disjointed, mixed metaphor.

I drifted to watch the trees again. Robins will attack each other in mid-flight, ramming against one another with a cry and a collision. I saw two butt their chests together, break away, fly to near perches. When next I noted the family, the mom, the older wee creature and a dad were striding down the small hill into the park, distances between each. From where I sat, the middle child who had fallen could not be seen.

I knew then he was the ring-leader. All the family woes foisted on him and, like a candle lit and re-lit, he was the fire and the lightpost.

He appeared from behind whatever trees prevented my seeing, barreling in the lead and reaching the playground first. The mom set about unpacking the loot brought for the Sunday morning outing - toys and other things. I drifted from watching again; in a few moments I would note the Tempestuous One had fallen and held up his foot, mock-crying and wanting more attention.

He was suitably ignored. As they had laboured down the hill -- that solemn walk to their Necessary Outing -- stone-faced, angry, sullen -- I saw the dad carried a handsomely dressed guitar on his back.

It piqued my interest, and the thoughts that had been rumbling around coalesced. A pattern! I would watch, then, and see whether it proved true.

Dad crossed the expanse on which the swing squatted -- one of those large, handsome industrial things from American childhoods -- six swings across and high to the heavens. Even at the distance, his muted anger slumped into his shoulders -- he would get to that bench or else! He would play his guitar and no one would disturb! He sat down at the bench perhaps three feet from the swing, took out the instrument and began to play. The distance was sufficient that I could not hear his music. He does nothing to help Mom, who is busily assembling the three children into the swings -- they are each packed securely into the swings when I glance their way.

Cameo of the American family, but one senses even now the moment cannot last. And because it is so transitory, even the illusion cannot be allowed its frail instance.

Baby in one of the swings that is girdled for wee creatures. But the straps from the backpack in which Mama had carried her to the playground trail to the ground beneath her.

Mama had not taken her out of it.

Mom's moment is brief. The middle tyrant wants out. Mom takes him over to the t-ball set she brought from home, hoping to placate -- hoping that somehow, she will capture that thing called 'the happy family' and the outing will work -- the elusive thing sought will be won. Her back is to the remaining two children, still swinging. When I look back to them, the oldest son has barrelled from his swing, too. He is standing in front of the baby, swinging her under the glassy eyes of the guitar-playing dad.

The boy pushes, hard. Angry, jabbing thrusts - the childish temper is apparent all the way up to where I sit watching.

Dad is oblivious, for all that his eyes remain exactly upon them.

The boy starts pulling with fury & glee at the dangling straps from the baby's backpack. The baby watches him mutely, bouncing about as he pulls but never raising her arms, never wailing.

I am becoming worried.

Dad strums on. The small boy begins to twist the baby's swing and let go. Baby spins like a top, her little rag doll arms still useless at her side; I will never see her raise them.

Dad continues to play his guitar. I am quite concerned by now -- all those indelicate questions tangling inside me -- do I risk interfering -- surely the father will snap out of his glum -- perhaps Mother will turn around...is this a matter that can be contained? That distance between us...if I run across the small distance -- if I yell?

The little boy grabs the baby's head with all the fierceness of the young male animal uncontrolled and uses it as his anchor to twist her around. Again, she explodes like a small top, whirling back in a circle, those arms still not raised in defense.

Middle boy tyrant is scarcely interested in t-ball; after the very few moments in which the above marks out its motions, middle tyrant's displeasure is roared and Mama turns from him, the pattern established and unable to escape: the two other kids; a passive-aggressive dad. As she turns and sees the disaster at hand, crying out, the Dad erupts into action.

To the casual eye, Dad did not see anything until Mama -- which is to say, they both noted the incident at the same time.

Dad, less than five feet from the incident and watching with dulled eyes the entire time he strummed...

Poor family. Absentee Dad, present but never there. Over the edge kids. Mother who has to do all of it alone...and cannot. The modern American family. No, not all of us. And, to be sure, as I sat there, Dad would actually put the guitar down and get involved with the kids.

But no laughter. No interplay between two parents damned now to hell until they give up and...do whatever comes next in a lifetime. For those fathers who need rest, working forty hours trying to go up the ladder; trying to make a life for their families, then coming home to that family of uncontrolled, raucous, blisteringly unhappy children and a mom who expects he will take over and give her rest, where is his rest?

And for the mothers who really need a dad in the picture so that they can have rest, where is Dad?

And those youngsters...seems that baby's immobility, as unresisting as a ragdoll -- as unmoving as the old Cabbage patch creations --those arms that never did anything but hang at her side -- the image of her compels as vividly as those boys, so very young and already acting out the angers of the day....