Weightless

Sunlight trickles through the canopy and dances on the patchy grass and dirt and the sand in the wooden box miles below. My grin is wide and my breath catches as I climb the narrow steel steps to the top of the slide. Everyone knows the one to the right of our cabin on the playground island mound is the fast one if you keep your hands off of the sides…

Sliding down was the same feeling every time, yet I could not get enough; a rush of air passed my ears, and for an instant all was a blur except for the rapidly approaching ground that my feet were outstretched to meet in anxious anticipation to run back around to the first ladder rung.

Now I am a bird swooping down on a field mouse; my doesn’t he look plump and lovely? Whooooooosh! Haha- got him. Of course I did; I am the most powerful hawk in these trees. I must return to my high perch and survey my expansive territory again… But, wait- what has happened? Chip, the most huggable, loveable, adorable dog in all the land has fallen to his doom? And now his Barbie Stylin’ collar with the magic rubies is going to be stolen by the evil cliff goblins? The Pink Power-Ranger can never let an animal lay in danger! I must use my super-mega-ultra-luging abilities to save the day! Whooooooosh! ‘Oh, Pink Power Ranger, you are my hero!’… Yes, I know, but I have a deep, dark secret, and you cannot tell anyone or the spell will be broken. I am also a mermaid. So now I must leave you in peace with all of your doggie friends so that I may slide back into my grotto before my father and sisters will know I have gone… Whooooooosh!

Even as I grew older and the slide’s true form was more apparent to me, it still allowed my access to a world in which, for a brief and satisfying moment, I did not need to remain grounded.

It is getting close to campfire time, so the breeze at the top of the slide is slightly chilly. I tuck into my shirt the locket from my dad, zip up my windbreaker, and let down my ponytail. The chute seems shorter from up here than I remember it being a couple years ago; it also seems narrower and I notice with a small cringe the rust and dirt collecting in the seams formed by the walls and the floor. I line my legs up with the clean, smooth streak running down the center of the slide before I nudge myself away from the ladder’s rails. My eyes close and my arms extend out from my sides as I rush quickly down. For a fleeting second I feel that familiar feeling of flying, and then I laugh when my feet suddenly fall onto the peat of the ground. To anyone possibly watching, I must have looked like Rose from “The Titanic.”

There were both bliss and liberation in letting myself fall without concern. The air I fell into on the slide was somehow sweeter and softer than all the rest as it rushed into my nostrils and through my hair. Upon landing, the ground was quicker to cradle my weight than anything else I had ever fell to.

Every slide was always as good as the last, no matter my age, no matter the time of day, no matter the weather. Then one year we stopped going to Letchworth. For two straight weeks that summer in my hometown, my mind dreamt of sliding down that playground slide: the fast one to the right of our cabin.