A Time To Play

One of the first things my parents quickly realized was that they needed a one story house.  So I think, with the help of the GI Bill, they were able to build a huge ranch style home.  I was five years old when we moved into the neighborhood.  Up until that time, most of my days were filled with adults, my brother and my cousin.  But my new house had a family next door with a little girl, just a year older then me.  She was an only child.  I remember moving day she came over to meet the new little girl next door and went home crying to her mother because the new little girl (me) was different.  She had never seen a child who could not walk. It wasn't long though that we became forever friends.  Her and my cousin, who was the same age as she was, were instrumental in making sure that I learned to play like other kids.  They spent hours pushing me up the hill on the tricycle or sled and then jumping on the back for the ride down with me.  There were many games of badminton or ping pong and they always chased down the ball or birdie for me.  We would play hide-n-seek counting to 100 instead of 10 or 50, giving me enough time to hide.  Remember when you could play outside past dark and nobody had to worry about you.  Mom would flash the porch light and then we knew it was time to go in. 
We had a swing set out back that we spent hours on behind our house.  I had learned to crawl up onto a swing and they would push me. But they would get up on these cross bars and hang like monkeys.  I, of course, did not want to be out done and knew I could figure out a way to get up there.  So I began to swing my swing seat sideways until I could grasp the bar.  Once I had done that I was able to get one leg swung over the cross bar and then pulled myself up there.  I was so proud as I called to my mom through the kitchen window to see what I had done.  You could literally hear the fear in her voice as she said "Oh honey, that's good.  How did you get up there?"  Then I hear her yell for my dad over her shoulder that he needed to come see what HIS daughter was up too.  They have a great picture that was taken that day of me sitting up there on that bar with a look of such accomplishment and my daddy standing next to me, so proud as well.   Even as teenagers we loved that old swing set.  Setting on it at night, talking about boys and school and the boys at school and church and the boys at church.
Us three girls had so much fun growing up playing dolls, putting on talent shows, playing games in the backyard.   Always, I was included in someway. 
My little neighbor friend passed on of cancer suddenly this year.  It was devastating but I will always have the hundreds of memories that her, my cousin and I shared growing up in our little neighborhood.  Oh, remember that huge home I told you we moved into.  Well I drove by it a couple years ago and it was so small.  It must have shrunk in the dryer or something. How could that big old kitchen we had fit in that little bitty house?  Funny how things look through the eyes of a child.