Power of Joy

It’s June.

In Australia, it’s been a warm autumn but finally, winter is slowly rolling in. As the first days of true cold press down, it has dawned on me that my children are slowly growing up.

Now that one is a teenager and the other is 12, I realise that they’ve left childhood.

As I stand beneath a giant oak tree in my yard, yellow and brown leaves flutter around my ankles. I looked towards a swing that I put up for them 10 years ago.

I don’t think calling it a swing is accurate. It’s more the remnants, the memory, of a swing. Tattered and frayed ropes hang, remembering what it was like when my children played there.

In the frigid winter breeze, the ropes still move. Not like they used to. But they still try to dance. And I think about the fact that a swing can move on its own. That it doesn’t need my children to still be a swing.

In that moment, as the sun glints through bare branches, I think about my children. I think about what’s important. What we remember and what moves us. As the cool blushes my cheeks red I feel a pang of sadness but also a flush of joy.

These ropes are no longer what they once were. They still sway, but like the seasons, things change, and that just means that we can appreciate what is.

So, I wrote this.

Power of Joy

Before Newton’s law

allows a swing to sway –

forth and back, breath of breeze,

end of ropes belay.

Physics though, for all its worth,

must first and yet compare,

to simple joy of laughter

swinging child’s fare.