Our little park

So, we're moving to New Orleans in 12 days.

More on that later.

The reason I mention it is because, since we made the decision to leave Florida, every day presents an opportunity for me to get a little choked up about something I'll miss.

Today, it rained. A lot. Aida and I got caught in the storm at our favorite neighborhood waterfront playground. She didn't mind. She loved it.

"Raining!" she said as she darted from the picnic shelter into the downpour, mimicking the joggers passing through. I ran after her and then realized there's no harm in my baby being wet. I let her run.

It's a good thing photos exist. I've taken a lot of them at this park. But I wish I could sear into permanent recall all the memories we have built at this little playground over the last two and a half years.

I remember walking through it with Steve right after we learned I was pregnant. I swear to you, every single child in that park was crying as we passed.

A week or so later, I walked through the park again, this time by myself. I'd just learned that it was highly unlikely this baby I was carrying would survive to term. There was a chance I would never have a baby at all.

That day, of course, all the children were happy and beautiful. Babies abounded.

It was the first park Aida ever visited.

A few days after she was born, Steve and I stuffed our baby in a turquoise sling wrapped around my body and walked the slowest two and a half blocks I have ever logged. Steve brought a camera and, when we got there, had the idea to snap her picture lying in the grass, as if she were abandoned or something. Proud, first-time Daddy moment, right?

Because I was a new mom, I was of course eager to see Aida play. The first time I placed her in the baby swing there, her eyes barely met the top of the swing seat. She cried. Other mothers stared. I didn't do it again for months.

We taped balloons to the picnic shelter on her first birthday and strung a homemade pennant banner from one wooden post to the next. Aida sat in a portable high chair at the end of one of the park tables, mushing her hand in her birthday cake, staring at all the people who were staring at her. Later, big kids took turns pushing her in the swing.

Aida learned how to climb here, how to run after squirrels here. She saw her first dolphins here and fell in love with "doggies, two doggies" here. She figured out she could swing on her belly here, mastered the curly slide here and tested her abilities to dangle from metal bars here. The birds alone have taught her volumes.

This park is part of our lives. With its kayakers and fishermen and the shirtless old guy who reads the paper each morning. With its palm trees and spandexed cyclists, and Wendy the playful chocolate pitbull who flings her body across the end of the fishing pier and valiantly plunges into the water every time that yellow ball soars.

New Orleans has parks. Two of them are especially spectacular. But as we hunt for a place to live there, I realize the opportunities to find a home within walking distance of a well-maintained playground are afforded to relatively few. Smart people are working to correct that.

That's a good thing.

Because in the short time we've come to know it, this park -- this admission-free, public, taxpayer supported park -- has come to represent a little bit of paradise in our lives. I think everyone should have that.

I will miss our little park.

Aug. 17, 2012