Swings:  although they’ve changed throughout the years I still believe they hold the same universal appeal.  My maternal grandmother loved to swing, as did my mother.  When they both were children they used to swing for hours, according to what they told me when I was little.  I think the most terrible thing I ever did was refuse to come off the swings once during second recess in first grade.  I can remember the hard wooden swings that were sort of precarious when I was really little.  Then I remember they switched to a sort of plastic sunken-seated swing.  I also recall the high metal poles got lower and lower, and regular dirt became sprinkled with woodchips, presumably in the interest of safety.  The thrill still remained of pumping one’s legs up, up, up; ready to chase the clouds.  My hands were sweaty and smelled of metal as the chains I gripped jangled.  Swings were an escape for me and also a chance to commune with nature.  Regardless of the season, I could fly.  I have very fond memories of my folks taking me to White Rock Lake on Sundays after church.  Daddy would nap on one of his grandmother’s handsewn quilts while Mama sat with him and kept an eye on me as I was swinging.  My little one recently told me she was on the swings for both recesses.  I told her that was not fair because someone else might like a turn.  With no small amount of chagrin I can remember hogging the swings myself.  Tire swings were always something I always found idyllic … particularly over a creek or river.  Growing up in an apartment we never had our own trees and our complex had no swings.  For Christmas this year I bought our little girl a tire swing, knowing how much she’d wanted a swing of her own.  Tire swings in our neighborhood seem to be both nostalgic as well as greeted with approval.  Before I picked my little one up from school this man walking his dogs caught me shrieking with glee as I spun about in her swing.  I stopped, embarrassed, and said it was really my nine year old’s but that I had never had one as a kid.  His reply was to stop and smile broadly; replying he had fond memories of his tire swing growing up and he encouraged me to make some of my own.  I am 50 years old and yet swinging on our tire swing makes me feel like I am ten again; that anything is possible and the world is mine.  The American founder of the tech organization “Girls Who Code,” Reshma Saujani said:

Most girls are taught to avoid risk and failure.  We’re taught to smile pretty, play it safe, get all A’s.  Boys, on the other hand, are taught to play rough, swing high, crawl to the top of the monkey bars, and then just jump off headfirst.

I want so much for my little girl.  While I do want her to get all A’s, I also want her to soar.  That is something for which I wish us all to aspire, without ever becoming tired.