My children have been playing together recently. Really playing. Really together. They collaborate to bring to life elaborate narratives and characters. The storylines are woven together from threads of favorite books, schoolroom dramas brought home by my eldest, and bits of stories my father has spun for them during our frequent visits to my parents’ house. The roles are argued and sometimes fought over. Hair is pulled. Tears are cried. Compromises are hard-won. Often the resolution is that they both play the same role.
Their sets seem to require every blanket and pillow in our apartment, including burp rags and swaddles I haven’t brought myself to let go of. Over the course of an hour, it can sometimes feel like every basket and drawer has been emptied in service of the creation of a world I am not a part of. 900 square feet of floor carpeted with stuffed animals, dolls, too-small clothing, rubber bands, blocks, tupperware, crayons…
This is the type of play I remember from my own childhood. My memories of creating forts with my brother under tables, of making a cave by pushing our couch onto its side, of building makeshift tree houses with ropes and boards, of taking our bikes apart in a failed attempt to make a tandem, of dragging blankets into the empty bathtub to make a home… they are as fresh in my mind as if we had lived them yesterday.
I suppose I’m writing this to remind myself that play is messy. What looks like chaos from the outside can have purpose and meaning when you are a part of that world.
My wooden blocks, magnetic blocks, and legos were stored together in a wicker laundry basket. I can remember the weight of it and the strength required to drag it out and dump it. Yes, dump it. Out of the chaos of the colorful pile, my brother and I would create what I remember as elaborate cities that our dolls and Ninja Turtles inhabited. We would leave these cities up for days (weeks?) returning to them to add on or rebuild as the storylines grew. When my parents would finally ask us to put the blocks away we would resist, so my mother came up with the idea of photographing our creations. This in a time when photos required film and time! She is truly one of the most generous people I know.
I found one of these photos recently. My thrill at discovering its existence was quickly dampened by the experience of looking at it. It is not impressive. It is not even easy for me to decipher what is happening in it. Maybe there was an airport? What was it about this particular arrangement of blocks that was so important to me that I needed to preserve it? That I considered placing it in a time capsule for the children of the future? (My children come by their flair for the dramatic honestly.)
The world in the photo no longer belongs to me. I cannot enter it. Something happened in the course of growing up that has spit me out and left me standing instead in a very real and very messy apartment with some serious implications for bedtime. Some days that is all I can see. Spilled milk on the counter from a bottle poured by little hands for her “baby.” Other days, the blur of activity from my children’s room, the living room, my room–truly nothing is off limits–and the sound of their voices talking over each other shocks me. This is what I dreamed of when we chose to have a second child. My children have granted each other entry into the world of play and I can choose whether to stand at the window and cringe or marvel at them. Either way we’re going to have to clean up.