Patricia Park

So I’m sitting in this park, with a wooden sign that names it for me: Patricia Park. I am waiting for Andrew to be done for the day and for us to get on the road for our 7 hour drive home. All the windows in the car are wide open, and the hatchback is lifted. I’m sure it looks a little bit weird, but without the wild, pre-thunderstorm wind that’s blowing through the car it would definitely be too hot to wait here; it may be mid-October, but summer has not let go yet. With the car open like this, it’s very comfortable, and the wind blows leaves and dead branches off the trees while a crow, standing in the shade, pecking disinterestedly at a pine cone, wobbles from the strength of a gust. There’s a tense moment where the lawn-mower men circle the park with their rickety truck and I think my reverie will be interrupted by the loud noise and acrid smell of gasoline from the lawn mowers but they drive off, apparently judging the grass short enough for today. I rejoice in my reprieve, feeling like I’ve won something.

This park is very green, lots of trees rustling their leaves and a baseball-diamond fence in the middle. There’s no baseball grid drawn into the grass surrounded by the tall chain link fence but that’s what it must be. You can see a worn clay-red spot right in the corner that might be home plate’s memory, and benches that would be a dugout. But there’s no path from running feet worn into the grass. Perhaps it isn’t used anymore or perhaps it is used for soccer nowadays. To the left of me, in a little patch of Crepe Myrtle trees, there’s a sun-and-wind-faded wooden mural of an almost-life sized tennis player, a jogger, and a baseball player wearing red and black batting gloves, brown bat raised. I think of how the artist would have worked on that mural, how s/he would have fussed over the colors of the tennis player’s pink shirt and the jogger’s orange shorts, the muscle ripples on his arms and shoulders, the angle of the batter’s bat. The pleasure he/she must have felt at getting a paid job.

I feel like an interloper. The strange person at the park with no children, no dog to walk. The cat sits in her cat-carrier, sleepy eyed and a little cranky; she does not want to go on another road trip. She is a little hot, even with the breeze, and I fuss over her, worry that she’ll get sick. She scowls and breathes quickly– maybe smelling all the strange outdoor smells, maybe feeling a bit hot in her "fur coat." But no one else can see her, realize that she is the reason I’m waiting in this park for Andrew instead of sitting in a coffee shop where I would not be odd for my solitary time-killing. So I worry that the walkers who glance curiously at me sitting here in my car will think I’m a stalker, or just someone weird, transient, scary.

There is a couple playing with their baby on the orange and blue slide/play/climbing set perched in the middle of some reddish clay-based sand, off to the side near the bathrooms which are part of the reason I’m waiting in this park instead of in front of Andrew’s work building. One woman has ultra short, spiked, military-style black hair. It’s a little bit thin and you can see her scalp through the spikes of hair. She wears those metal frame sunglasses and smiles a lot. She’s very tan, and lean, and a bit muscley. She probably jogs here; she has the look of a jogger. The other woman is softer, a little rounder, not quite as lean. She wears baggy jean shorts and a purple tank top. She has a long blond ponytail and she calls her partner "Hon" and they laugh and wave when the other families leave. One of the two moms has a slightly hoarse voice– perhaps getting over a cold, or perhaps she just has that perpetual "whisky voice" that female radio DJ’s and rappers cultivate.

Their little girl looks to be about three years old. She has black spikey pigtails that stand straight up on the sides of her head, tied with little pink ribbons. The hair is so short it is probably a struggle to get it into pigtails, but someone has been stubborn and wants the cute style. She trots purposefully about the park while the two women watch, laughing and shouting encouragement to the little girl. They call each other mommy.

I’m guessing the girl was adopted, maybe from China. Her fat little cheeks betray how well-fed she is, and she races away from her two mothers with no fear. She is confident, knows that she will be caught and hugged and loved, and if she falls to scrape a knee, the knee will be kissed and cleaned with Bactine and bandaged with a Powerpuff Girls Band-Aid. The mommies run to catch her, wipe down her dirty elbows, take her back to the truck to change her diaper. She escapes them briefly while she’s still naked, glorifying in the diaper-free state that makes babies dash and giggle– delighted and gleeful in her freedom. When they catch her, the mommies tease and laugh and diaper and powder. They hover over the little girl with the attention of a wanted-but-not-expected gift– other parents let their children roam with less supervision, but the two mommies play more actively. They know a little more about how easy it would be to lose their family, perhaps.

The scene makes me think about all the lesbian couples who have already and will adopt little girl babies from China. What that will look like in a few years. Lovely middle-aged women, going gray, of various races, very different from each other physically but growing together in that way long-married couples do. Finishing each other’s sentences. Scowling at an old, tired joke. Rubbing sore feet and shoulders. Raising a confident, perhaps tall and lean, Chinese girl who will speak perfect English. Who will go to school with a slightly different family-life. Who will perhaps grow weary, and sigh, explaining it to others for the millionth time. I’m sure the two mommies will try very hard to introduce the little girl to the culture she would have had in her homeland; she will grow up being told that she was wanted by her mommies here but that her mommy elsewhere could not take care of her in the way she deserved to be cared for. The girl will most likely be well-educated, go to college– for this is one opportunity these couples are providing these little girls, unwanted in their own country. It is not cheap or easy to adopt a baby from another country– so these mothers will have worked very hard, saved some money perhaps, have good jobs. Some of the girls will, no doubt, as these things happen, be lesbians themselves, some will be heterosexual (for I do not believe being gay is a choice, rather, it is something we are born with) and may or may not choose to become mommies. Many will start so-called "traditional" families with a man or adopt like their mothers did; they will have babies who will have two grandmas. And have to explain that, with a sigh, for the umpteenth time to curious but well-meaning friends. Perhaps it will not be so unusual by then, though.

It is an interesting visual. Blonde, soft mommy. Dark-haired lean-muscled mommy. Little Asian girl with chubby cheeks and pink ribbons, who will grow into a beautiful, well-loved adult woman with a life she would not have had anywhere else on Earth. Maybe she will have memories of this park, with its sports mural, its unused baseball diamond. Its tire swing. The other women walking their dogs; the young man sitting in his truck with the motor running and air conditioner full-blast. The couple playing tennis. The solitary redhead in a green car trying to look like she’s not watching, trying to not seem creepy. Most likely no-one but me will ever remember this moment; it’s an ordinary day for most of them. But I will see families like the little Asian girl’s, invariably, in my future, and think of a sleepy windy Monday in a park in Louisiana, and two women lovingly calling each other "Hon."