Come Play
with Me!
Written By Lynne Bertrand
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Fast forward to the early 1990s, when I became a mother. The theater looked different in one subtle way: The adults had come onstage. They. Actually. Played. They dug to China in the YMCA sandbox. They covered center field. In surreal moments, we mothers played house, pretending to be mothers.
In the middle of noticing this cultural change, I discovered something, um, awkward. Despite all the years I had logged as a child in the land of pixie dust, I no longer had what it took to play. Of course, I could throw a ball around or cuddle a doll. But I lacked a kid's untethered imagination, a bottomless capacity for messing around. What does one say in the middle of pretending to be a baby dolphin? How do you sustain enthusiasm through 8,000 rounds of Go Fish? Why didn't kids get itchy, like I did, when their SuperBalls wonged down the driveway? I couldn't switch moods fast enough to go for a quick gallop on the hairy old horse, then organize Barbie's stilettos, then thunder up and down the slide till lunch.
"Come play with us!" my kids called.
"Be right out!" I said. But how?
Show me how to do like you. Show me how to do it.
Alice Walker put those Stevie Wonder lyrics on the opening page of "The Color Purple." It's what I wished for too. My kids and I would have a lot of long years ahead together if I didn't figure out how to play again.
