Flashback to my sophomore year of high school. It's English class, my last of the day. We're studying the romantic poets: Blake, Keats, Yeats--and my teacher is going off about something called "deep joy."
Deep joy? Like...really, really psyched? No, deep joy was a romantic idea, the notion of being so moved by nature and its beauty and life, you feel a lightness you only feel once in your life. The rest of your life is spent trying to find that lightness, that meaning, that "deep joy" you felt then. We studied many poems of Wordsworth and the idea of deep joy, which can be found in other romantic poems. "Lines Written A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey," and one of my favorites, "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," describe these moments of "deep joy." Wordsworth writes about his deep joy experience in the English countryside near an abbey called Tintern, and how he has changed since then. He also laments how he wishes for the same feeling again, though he was grateful for having it.
I think this romantic idea of "deep joy" has some truth in it. I'm sure we could all think of a moment in our lives where we felt so much security, so much beauty, that we felt lighter than air. I know I've had a moment like this. It came at a time when I needed it most, and when I'm struggling, or it rains in October, I think about this moment. This is a piece I wrote earlier this year and it was originally about a place that was like home to me, but also it describes this moment of deep joy that I think Wordsworth was writing about.
The Park
Children run, tripping and falling over themselves as the leaves do. Mothers sway like the grass by the creek at the bridge, their younger children asleep on their shoulders. The playscape, a city for those who dream, waits for the next adventure. It hides among a grove of trees. The swing set creaks and bends with each weight upon it, taking children above their anthill worlds. It is a park tucked away in the outskirts of Austin, Texas, that makes me feel at home. I spent my childhood here. I remember the sun scorching the leaves above us kids, our voices mingling with those of the birds singing with abandon. There are many things about my home that make me feel like a caged bird, but at the neighborhood park I am free. Perhaps it is because since I was a child it has provided escape from the stress of everyday life. This happened in various times of my life, first-when I was young, and second, as I grew older.
The first time I felt at home in the park was when I was a child. Whenever I think back to playing in the park till the yellow faded into blue, the sun going to sleep under the clouds, the part of my brain that keeps memories is soothed with nostalgia. I remember the taste of ginger snaps and oranges, I hear the calls of childhood friends, I feel the dirt on the ground getting all over my clothes. I remember my dad pushing me on the swing, sending me up high till I screeched with excitement. I remember soccer practices with my dad calling out to me, “Reticulate the ball down the field,” the phrase ringing in my ears as I smell the grass and rain. Memories of splashing through the creek in the forest, clothes dripping with mud, swinging on monkey bars. Memories jumbled together make up a collage of nostalgia and happiness.
As I grew older, the park remained an escape for me. When I got the news that the cancer in my dad’s brain was too demanding for him to go on and that his time was up, my feet found their way to the park with my cousin and twin. It was October, yet summer was still in the air. The park was the same, children laughing, the sound of swing sets creaking. We took a turn into the forest area, and were greeted by a dirt path lined with weeds and wildflowers. The creek was dried up, no splashes came from our feet as we crunched over dry leaves and rocks that were parched. A tree, dehydrated and withering, hung its limbs over the creek, abandoned by its leaves. We all sat, not speaking, beneath it. The quiet here allowed the sound of the hospice doctor’s voice, the beeping of the ventilator, and hacking cough of my dad to fade out a little bit. It gets harder to hear those noises when I hear the wind talking with what leaves remain on the trees, birds interrupting them constantly.
The day before my father was officially gone, there was a rain shower. Gray falling down on green and brown. It wasn’t loud. It was as if the earth let out a sigh, and the rain hushed it. My cousin and my sister and I were children again for a while. Girls who hadn’t twirled or splashed in puddles in years were now, once more, covered by their play in the storm.
I felt at home then, free. I felt protected from what was in the world, from waking up to live in nightmares again. Here, safety reigned where weeds took over benches and the wild was King. Here, the universe was not confined to the laws of physics, to whatever laws medical school had taught my dad’s doctors. Here, I was home.
