Some Things Never Change

In a ratty edged photo album on the bottom shelf of the bookcase upstairs, there is a picture of my cousin Christy and I on the swing set at my grandparents house.  It is a Polaroid taken by my paternal grandmother, better known to us all as Grammy, who loved taking pictures of her grandbabies but hated being on the other side of the lens.  In the picture Christy and I are clutching our prized possessions of the day, our Cabbage Patch Kids.  We are young in the picture...I was perhaps seven or eight, and our hair has lightened to the color of wheat and flax from the hours we spent outside in Pop's garden, terrorizing his beloved pea plants and playing hide and seek in the rhubarb.  As much as I remember those days from looking at that Polaroid, I can also close my eyes and see the image from the point of view of the girls on the swings because that is what we did almost every day, all summer long.  We swung as high as our little legs could pump us, singing You Are My Sunshine at the top of our lungs and quite probably out of tune.  When we weren't swinging we had a quilt spread on the front lawn under the maple tree Pop had planted when our parents were children.  It had branches that were well spaced for climbing, and the grass that grew beneath it was moist and cool on the hottest of summer days.  On that quilt beneath the maple tree we spread out our doll blankets and bibs, diapers and baby bottles.  There were piles of doll clothes, lovingly stitched by Grammy: dresses with smocking, dainty white aprons and calico blouses, trousers for our boy dolls and little vests to match (I still have mine, carefully folded between sheets of tissue paper in a floral box in my basement).  We played with our dolls for hours on end, taking great care to make sure we walked them enough, gave them plenty of bottles, let them nap in the shade, and sang to them during soothing rides on the swings.  We were forever practicing being mothers, at least that's what we did when we weren't catching grasshoppers and other bugs to taunt Grammy with. 
Last week Christy and I,along with our Aunt Nancy, met at a local playground to let our children play on the nice new equipment.  The slides and ladders, tunnels and bubble windows drew in our children, keeping them well occupied.  But old habits die hard, and Christy and I found ourselves drawn to the swings.  Aunt Nancy, never without her camera, has taken Grammy's place as photographer, and technological advances mean that our faces are captured in digital rather than Polaroid.  She snapped a photo of us swinging, me with Emma on my lap, and Christy with Alyssa on hers.  We've both come a long way since the days of our dollies: we are, finally, the mothers we were forever practicing to be.  But sitting there, on the set of swings that seemed to call to me from the moment we entered the play area, I was eight years old again, swinging with my best playmate and holding a beloved baby on my lap.