The Razed Playground: A Parable of a Dream

     
Have you ever been told, "You can't do that"? This is a story that proves everyone else wrong. But it does come at a price.

She sat on the playground with her toy trucks, pile of broken twigs, and a few rocks she dug up from the dirt patch adjacent to the playground. It was her construction site, and she was waiting for her crew to being building her city. They were over an hour late.

Yesenia picked up her dump truck and inspected the wheels. Three out of the four worked. The fourth hung wobbly off its pin-sized axis. It wouldn't rotate. She picked up another truck and did the same thing. All in all there were five broken wheels on six trucks. She grabbed her olive shoulder bag, the one she carried the trucks over in, and pulled out a small notebook and pencil she stole from the library. She wrote down which trucks needed which wheel repaired and threw the notebook back into her back. Still no friends arrived.

The real construction crew arrived at the dirt patch and began their digging, hammering, and sawing. The noise called Yesenia, and she hopped off the playground and walked towards the dirt patch. The crew was all wearing canary hard hats and neon orange coveralls. Each on had a specific, discernible task. The man with the clipboard checked everyone's work. The one at the table saw was cutting wood of different lengths. The ones with the shovels were either digging trenches or filling them in. There was one gentleman standing in the corner, chest held high, hard hat slightly crooked, closely watching everything. The man with the clipboard checked in with him after every visit with a crew member.

Yesenia loved the order and control of it all. She wanted to be the one with the slightly crooked hard hat. She just needed her friend to show up so she could begin being boss. Thirty more minutes passed, and she was still by herself.

The dirt patch was transforming before her eyes. It was flatter and smoother than earlier in the morning. The trenches outlined different size boxes making the dirt patch look almost like a quilt. Now, some of the shovelers were digging deep holes for large wooden posts. The guy at the table saw was cutting cutting the posts that would soon be filling the holes. The man with the clipboard was smiling. The man watching it all was also smiling.

Yesenia was smiling. Her friends still weren't there, and she didn't care. She was happy watching everything from the top of the slide and taking notes. She considered it good fortune that she had this time to prepare. Her notebook was full of roles and instructions for each on of her friends. She was now ready and ecstatic to build.

A loud scream erupted from the far end of the dirt patch, and  men ran to find it. Yesenia slid down the slide and joined the crew at the construction site. There in one of the holes was a man crying, blood pouring from a gash above his eye. The foreman with the clipboard ran to a truck parked near by and returned with a white plastic box. The man with the crooked hard hat furrowed his brow and squinted his green eyes; he dabbed the wound with a red handkerchief he pulled from his back pocket. Blood continued spilling to the ground.

The foreman man opened the first aid kit and started dressing the wound. After a number of bandages and gauze, it was apparent the injured man had to see a doctor. Nothing stopped the bleeding. The boss looked looked worried and rubbed his hands back and forth. He surveyed the dirt patch and pulled clipboard man aside. Yesenia followed.

"Harvey needs ta get ta hospital. Ya take him. I'll try and keep on schedule," said the man with the green eyes.

"You sure? We need to finish setting all the beams today or we'll fall behind. We need to be ready for concrete tomorrow," replied the man whose clipboard now sat on the dirt beside his feet.

"We need ta keep our men safe. That's the most important thing. Just go. I'll figure it out."

Yesenia looked back at the playground. Her friends weren't there. She turned back to the conversation between the two men and interjected, "I can help! I've been watching you all morning. What can I do?"

The two men turned to her and noticed her brown pigtails, ruddy cheeks, and dirty jeans. They both let out a small chuckle that reached Yesenia's ears and made her frown.

"I just want to help. Isn't there anything I can do?" She snapped.

The green eyed man replied, "Kiddo. Yer a little too young. Thanks for the offer, but ya could get hurt."

Hearing the reply, Yesenia sat down on the dirt. "I'm not moving until you find me something to do."

The foreman tapped his boss on the shoulder and whispered in his ear. The corners of the green eyed man's lips lifted. "Of course," he whispered loudly.

He turned to Yesenia. "We have something ya can do, but ya must follow our rules. They're there to keep ya safe. Do you understand?"

Yesenia jumped to her feet. "Of course I do! What can I do, and what are the rules?"

A few minutes later and Yesenia was holding the clipboard in her hands and a yellow hard hat pushed her ears out so she looked a little like Dumbo. The injured worker and the original clipboard man left for the hospital. Everyone else was back at work digging holes, cutting wood, and placing the posts in the holes. Yesenia tiptoed carefully between the stations and reported the progress to the boss.

"Everything looks okie dokie," she said. "I'm paying close attention to their work and the items on the clipboard just like you told me. So far nine of the sixteen items are done!"

As she was giving her report, her friends strolled up to the playground. They saw her in the construction site and waved. She ignored them and continued her report. When she was finished she asked the boss, "What's next?"

"It looks to me like yer friends have arrived. Why don't ya go play with 'em and leave the construction to us," he replied.

Yesenia began fidgeting. She was torn. She wanted so much to run to her friends, tell them about helping out at the dirt patch, and begin building her own city, but she also loved being a part of the construction crew. Here she had a finite task and knew exactly what her role was: to check off tasks on her list. There she knew what her role would be too - boss - but with it came more responsibility. She didn't know which she preferred.

"Could my friends help you out," she asked.

"No, Yesenia, they can't. It's too dangerous here for kiddos."

"But I'm a kid, and I'm helpin' you out."

He laughed. This time it wasn't a small chuckle, but a full bellied chortle. Its harsh braying tone hit Yesenia's ears and she started crying. She knew it wasn't a laugh to humor her. It was a laugh making fun of her. She turned her back to her boss.

"Listen, sweetie," he said, "yer a girl. Sure ya've been helping me out, but I only gave ya that task to make sure ya didn't get in our way. This ain't a place for ya. Go along and play with yer friends. We've already had one man injured. Don't need a kiddo injured too. Especially a girl as pretty as you."

Yesenia stopped her crying and whipped around to face the boss, her black hair a messy, untamed flurry. "Just because I am a girl and a kid doesn't mean I can't help. You just wait and see mister boss."

Green eyed man laughed a little more as he turned away from Yesenia and returned to the construction site. Yesenia grabbed the clipboard determined not to give it back, and joined her friends on the playground.

Many years later, Yesenia was the lead contractor on the new world's tallest building. She surveyed the construction site, which currently housed a housing complex, with her clipboard in hand, scribbling notes and secrets she wouldn't show anyone else. It needed to be razed for construction to begin.

Next to the complex was a playground that also needed demolition. She meandered over to the slide and inspected it. There in the shade underneath the slide was a toy truck half buried in the sand. She picked it up and fiddled with the wheels all four of them were broken.

She picked up her pen and made one last note on her clipboard: "To childhood dreams, may they be razed with care."

The Finch and the Apple: A Tall Tale of Forgiveness

This story was inspired by a dream my husband had. In it, a bird flew into my mouth. My husband tried to get it to come out, but it was trying to climb out my ear. He doesn't remember if it ever flew away. 

Here is my interpretation of the story.

***
He prayed every morning to God recalling the previous days events and asking for forgiveness when he did something wrong or hurtful or foul even when he wasn't the perpetrator but the victim thinking that he was still somehow to blame. His prayers would sometimes take hours to complete. He rattled his transgressions off, list-style, point by boring points sometimes lost among the mundane. His knees ached from the hours of kneeling on the thinly carpeted floor. He was often late for school excused by his mother's note. He had more than 50 of these excuses on file each year.

One morning after a strange dream where a bird flew into his mouth and built a nest between his ears and incessantly chirped making him unable to pray and hear the word of God, he woke up, showered, ate his breakfast of Pop Tarts and Sunny D, and got to school on time. His teacher looked at him, unsure who he was, and said, "Good morning. You're name again?"

He replied, "Josef Benedict Smith, III."

"Good to finally meet you," and his teacher marked him present for the first time that year.

Josef was in a fabulous mood all day. He even caught himself whistling or humming unaware he was doing it, the song reminiscent of his dream. He smiled as he passed other students in the hall. He didn't sit alone in the cafeteria eating his packed lunch of a ham and American cheese sandwich with Miracle Whip, banana, Chips Ahoy, and strawberry-kiwi Capri Sun. Rather, he risked sitting next to students from his early morning class and they said: "Hello. I'm Sally. Have a seat. We were just talking about..." or "Hey. What's up?" or "God! I fucking hate that teacher. Don't you?" He didn't talk to anyone. He just sat quietly, eating, nodding occasionally in acknowledgment or disagreement. No one could tell.

He arrived home and was greeted by a little bird with yellow patches on its head and breast the rest of its body a brownish gray perched on the apple tree his mom and him planted a few years back. He recognized the bird from his dream and walked to the tree quietly hoping to not disturb it the bird. It just sat there as he approached.

When Josef got close enough to almost touch the bird, it flew off the branch, and Josef gasped loudly remembering the vision from his dream and the bird zipped into his mouth carrying with it a small piece of apple from the tree. Shocked, Josef closed his mouth and swallowed hard, and the bird and the tidbit of apple it carried glided down his esophagus and filled his belly. He became dizzy and stumbled to his room. He plopped down on the bed and the room spun.

Soon, he found himself lost among a landscape of Honeycrisps, finches, bright sunlight, and soft moonglow. The song of dreams echoed creating a beautiful round filling everything.

"Hello," whispered Josef. "Hello?"

He meandered the rows of trees ducking out of day into night and back again. He watched the ochers and viridians and crimsons and grays zip across the sky creating streaks of vibrant color that danced upon his eyes. He became dizzy again, the kind of dizzy right before throwing up, and fell to his knees. He started coughing and small strands of spittle flew out of his mouth. Next, he was heaving, stomach convulsing, and out flew the bird, the apple gone from its beak, wings dripping with saliva.

Josef was exhausted from the ordeal and laid on the grass looking up at the half day, half night sky. The finch hopped on his shoulder shaking its body to remove the spit. A little piece landed in his eye. He wiped it away with the cuff of his t-shirt.

"Hello," sang the finch.

"Hello," said Josef as if talking to a finch were nothing out of the ordinary.

"Why do you pray, Josef," asked the finch, its voice high and airy.

Josef hesitated. Then, replied, "To be forgiven?"

"Forgiveness, dear Josef, is not the land of finches or gods." The finch flew off Josef's shoulder and joined the myriad of finches in the apple orchard as another line in the beautiful round still echoing everywhere. Its gentle lullaby lulled Josef to sleep.

The aroma of meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and apple pie wafted up to his bedroom and tickled the hairs inside his nose. He woke up -- the green and yellow walls of his room slowly coming in to focus, a small song outside his window, his mother yelling, "Josef! Josef! Dinner time!" He pushed himself off of his bed and walked to the window. A small finch greeted him with a cocked head and a wink. He smiled.

"I'm coming!" He yelled down to his mom. "Just one minute."

"Hurry up or it'll get cold," she yelled back.

Josef looked at the finch and said, "Thanks for the adventure. I think I understand."

He walked downstairs and joined his mother at the dinner table.

"Mom, why do you pray," he asked.

"Josef," she laughed. "That is a silly question," and dismissed him.

"No, mom. Why do you pray?"

"I don't know, Josef. I just do. I learned it from my parents, and I've been doing it ever since. It's just a habit now, I guess. And besides, if we don't ask God for forgiveness, who do we ask?"

"But what if God can't forgive us?"

"Josef, let's stop this silly conversation. God always forgives. It's His job.

"Now, how was your day?"

Josef smiled. "Good. It was the best."

"Excellent," said his mother as she started sorting through the pile of mail next to her dinner plate. "Now, clean your plate so we can have some apple pie."

The next morning, and every morning after, Josef awoke humming the song of the finches with the taste of apples upon his lips.