Random Writings I came to be Proud of

The Red Park (One-Page Memoir for English)

There's a playground a block from my house, outside a local museum. When I was younger, my mom would take my sisters and I over there to play on it. We would go frequently, as it was close and we loved it there. To distinguish between it and a similar park slightly further from home, we called it "the red park" because of its bright, rosy red slides.

Young me loved the joy of riding down the 3 different slides and proceeding to climb back up again, whether on the staircase or the plastic rock-like structure, then doing it all over again. My sisters and I would have races down the slides to see who could go fastest. When we needed a change of play, we would even climb back up the slides again, as we were usually the only ones there.

We'd spend ages rolling down the huge hill and climbing back up to do it again with stars practically shooting off our heads. We'd eventually return to the playground, where we climbed up onto the built-in stools a little beyond our reach, and ate goldfish crackers.

As we got older, visits to the red park slowly declined, even as my brothers came along. We just... grew out of it.

The stars glimmered, the sun bore down, the clouds rolled by, the winds blew, and the rain fell. Throughout the years I almost entirely forgot the park was there.

Last year, my siblings and I took on the babysitting of a single mom's 2 young children. We usually kept them close to our house, blowing bubbles and coloring pictures. But one day, my mom filled up water bottles and unburied the wagon for them to ride in. We took the block's walk over to the park.

Through the rain, sun, and wind, the slides lost their lustrous red to a light gray-ish pink. The platforms faded to gunmetal gray. Everything about the park seems to have changed and it simply doesn't feel right. Even as the memories flood back, I cannot be entirely happy upon returning to the red park with the knowledge that it will never be quite the same again.