"I climbed a mountain and I turned around."

Our beloved horses playground is gone.

Early this morning, I asked Grace if she wanted to go to the store, and she answered, "Coffee shop, Bagels and Brew, horses, horses playground. Sounds good." She is, of course, referring to our daily routine of walking 30 minutes to the horse stables, then another 5 to Bagels and Brew Coffee shop, and finally back to the horses playground, a 30 year old wooden tree house-like fort nestled in the trees below the stables.

When I first saw this playground, I groaned. Like all Stay-at-home-moms, my life sometimes seems to revolve around cool toddler places that are within walking distance from our house. Not only was this park at least 30 minutes away, but it was old, monochromatic, splintery, and dirty. I guessed it was as old as I was and later found out it was even older. But at Serrano Creek Park ("horses playground"), there is more than meets the eye.

True, it is a long walk there. But that walk became my daily exercise. Yes, it lacked the colorful, modern look of newer playgrounds and was built on dirt, not sand or woodchips. But it became our own little fort in the trees, with plenty of shade and a diverse system of challenges for a 2 year old. Most parks are a boring repetition of "go up the stairs and down the slide, go up the stairs and down the slide." No wonder moms are so bored they spill their guts to stangers. But this play structure required strategy and physical courage, with tall ladders, a very shaky chain link bridge, and a long narrow slide on which Grace has almost fallen off several times. At the top of the structure was a little room from which you can see the stables. Every time Grace climbs up there, she hollers, "Hi horses!!" at the top of her lungs. When they make that sound that horses do--sort of a whinny sound, Grace adds, "Bless you, horses!" And if we are lucky, someone decides to walk their horse through this forest area while we are at the playground, which to Grace is like having a front row seat at the Rose Parade. In short, the whole place was like a hidden treasure.

"Where horses playground are?" asks Grace as we come out of the stables. I look up and am shocked to see the whole playground demolished. I glance at Grace to see if she is okay--to see if she understands what has happened, and it is lucky that they are still in the midst of tearing part of it down since that involves an excavator and Grace is obsessed with diggers. "Digger, Mommy!" she yells, pointing to the bulldozer and excavator. I roll my off-road stroller right over the yellow caution tape to where a worker is standing. "What's going on here? Are they," I stammered, "going to replace it?" I finish lamely. I don't get a straight answer until we come back from the coffee shop and find a Lake Forest City employee, who tells us that they will be building a brand new, state of the art structure over 100 yards away in the Eucalyptus trees. "Building will begin a year from now," he says, as though that solves my problem of having a 2 year old that needs to run around everyday.

We go over to the swing set, which will remain for a few more months, and Grace rides in it, melancholy and reflective. She looks up at me and says, "I'm sad."
"Why, honey?"
"Horses playground gone. Build new one in the trees." She glances back at the ruins of her fort--the place she learned to climb a ladder, the first place that became part of our life since moving here 4 months ago, and reiterates, "Horses playground gone. I'm sad."

While the tragedies of Katrina this week certainly put something like this event in perspective, let’s not diminish these milestones in our own lives. Saying goodbye to this place is like folding up little 0-3 month baby clothes and putting them in the attic once your 2nd daughter is 4 months old and your husband doesn’t want more than two kids. It's like throwing away your old, worn out wallet that you bought the summer after high school from a street vendor in Florence and used all the way through college and your 20-something single years after your new mother-in-law gives you a new one for Christmas. It's like changing your last name when you get married. These places and objects come to represent a time in your life that you will never get back. Regardless of the fact that you might be moving onto a bright new stage, the passing of time and the objects of that time of your life can be bittersweet.

When I was a little girl, I once cried at the end of the school year when I had to throw out my worn-out uniform oxford shoes. I cried because those shoes were like companions to me all year. They endured everything I did--the recess time, the tests, the friendship fights, the waiting on the corner for my mom to pick me up, the walking down the corridor to the lunch room, the assemblies--all of it. They were like witnesses to my life and only those shoes knew as much about what I had gone through all year as I did. The scuffed leather and worn-through soles were testament to their loyalty.

The horses playground is the only thing besides me and newborn Natalie who witnessed Grace coming face to face with the challenge of crossing the chain link bridge and backing down, unwilling to risk it. The horses playground saw Grace's face when she finally decided to cross that bridge, get up on the other side, and yell, "I did it, Mommy!" The horses playground saw Grace learn that just because Natalie was nursing doesn't mean Grace gets to nurse. (How the hell do you nurse two kids at once in a splintery, dusty playground?) I've grown at this park, too. It was here that I learned to relax when things took too long, that an unscheduled day can be full of adventure, that this time with my children, although at times monotonous, tedious, and frustrating, was a gift from God in that I was the one coaching Grace through the chain link bridge challenge; I was the one bursting into laughter when Grace said bless you to the horses; I was the one giving her a high five when she came down the slide all in one piece.

This all makes me think of the time I drove in my old ’88 Toyota Landcruiser from my parents’ house in San Francisco to my new place in Monterey after college. As I left 101 and drove down the foggy stretch of highway 1 late at night, the radio played the Stevie Nicks version of “Landslide.” I cried that night, too—for all the change ahead of me, for the miracle that I got a job at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, for the relief that college was finally over, for the time I would never get back again now that I’d graduated.

Okay, so the horses playground coming down isn’t the end of the world. After all, dry rot can only hold up for so long. But I include my favorite lines from “Landslide” for you anyway.

Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?

Well, I’ve been afraid of changing cause i’ve
Built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Even children get older
And I’m getting older, too.
I'm getting older, too.