Grounded In Play

 I picked up my phone on the morning of June first and saw that there was a text from one of my fellow teachers. I'm used to getting texts from my colleagues. What I am not used to is getting a text from one of my fellow teachers a week after we have finished the school year about

Wait for it

The resurfacing of our school's playground. 

You read that right. The text my friend sent me was of a front loader scooping up a great mass of broken asphalt. The bane of my professional existence for the past twenty-six years was being carted away. In great big truckfuls. 

This was a big enough deal to me that I laced up my shoes and ran out of the house, all the way to school where I could witness this magic all for myself. For a great many years it has been my good fortune to teach PE on the desolate moonscape that has passed for a playground. Every year or so, the district would send out a crew to make vague attempts at patching the craters and cracks that proliferated across this expanse. Each year it just got worse. And worse. Each year, whenever the opportunity would present itself, I would make loud noises to anyone who would listen about the state of my school's yard. Each year, those pleas would be met with another round of patching. Each PE class included several requests for the students in my charge to please not throw the broken bits of asphalt and rocks at one another. Over the past year, these pleas were expanded to include bits of the melted rubber that had been used the summer before as patching material. 

On the morning of June 1, 2023, all of that mess was broken into tiny bits, or at least more manageable bits and removed, leaving a barren stretch of earth that would soon be turned back into a play surface for children in grades K through Five. All of those hopes and dreams were suddenly made real for me and the kids who attend, or will attend, my school. Our school. The place with the new playground. The playground I thought might never happen. The playground about which I had recently been centering my plans for retirement. 

But I confess there was a tiny black cloud on the magnificent horizon. Upon first witnessing the initial photo, I felt the urge to call my mother with the news. A moment later, I uttered a curse. Loud enough for my wife to ask what was wrong. My mother didn't live long enough for me to tell her. 

I am assured, by those in the know, that she is aware. She may have had something to do with it.