Playground, 2010
“Riiiiinnggg!!!,” the bell chimed, signaling recess.
All of the elementary school children, cooped up for most of the day, squeal in delight for their playtime in the sun. They all run outside in unison, the bulky, steel school doors clanking in their wake. All the students except one. One of the little girls, brown pigtails bouncing in the air, takes her time. She absorbs the feeling of sunshine kissing her skin and watches the flowers in nearby shrubs dance in the subtle afternoon wind, dutifully willing the wheels of her posterior walker along with her. She runs along the outside border of the play area and jumps on the top bar of her walker, riding most of the way and blatantly ignoring the “THIS BAR IS NOT A SEAT” sticker plastered on her self-proclaimed Batmobile. Everyone has to have their fun one way or another. Eventually, she arrives at her bench. The one with the green handlebars under the biggest oak tree in the playground.
“How’s it going Ed?” she calls out to her tree. In her head, Ed is her Mother Willow from Pocahontas. She loves that movie. Ed’s billowing branches and thick trunk offers her solace in a spot she feels is meant just for her. It has the perfect view of her classmates playing cops and robbers and trying to push each other off the tire swing. She is perfectly content observing and occasionally racing around on her Batmobile. Her friends will even stop by her bench from time to time and make her the referee of their games. As the recess hour dwindles on, the girl’s teacher comes to check on her with a gleam in her eye that the girl could not understand. In a voice laced with admiration and slight curiosity, the teacher comments, “Oh Caroline, the other schoolteachers and I spend nearly every recess watching you. We are so impressed with how happy you are all the time. Good for you.”
Caroline looks at her, confused. “Why would I not be happy?” she asks with a slight tilt of the head.
The teacher comes up short with a response. “Well, honey. You just have to handle so many things at your age that none of the other kids have to, and we never see you complain!”
Caroline does not know what the right response is, but she knows that she is frustrated. “I have a lot of things the other kids don’t have,” she affirmed to her teacher. “I have Ed, the Batmobile, my mommy and daddy, and I’m the referee for cops and robbers. I might look different, but I have everything in the world to be happy about.”
The teacher did not argue, replying simply, “I guess you’re right.”
Home, Present day
Looking in the mirror, Caroline sighs. Her pigtails are long gone, and she continues to ignore the readily forming fine lines under her eyes from lost sleep. She often forgets the promise she made to herself to count her blessings more than her downfalls, her growing anxiety and stresses a constant reminder of that. But before leaving for class, her eyes cast down to a sticker she kept on her mirror from all those years before, “THIS BAR IS NOT A SEAT,” beside it a picture of all her classmates pushing her on her walker. Glee is written over all of the children’s faces.
“Batmobile,” she chuckles to herself in recollection.
Caroline remembers that conversation with her elementary school teacher and the affirmations a young girl once made in solidarity with herself. Although the Batmobile has been traded in since then for a newly minted black cane, she takes it in her hand and then stands up a little straighter as she looks at herself in the mirror. The young girl knew then that happiness is a choice, and her older counterpart would still make that choice now.
“I guess it’s time to keep having my fun,” she declares to herself before embarking on her day.
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