A Swing in the Park

It was the summer of 1976 when my father left us. It was a particularly memorable summer and my mother suffered terribly. My father had left her for a younger woman and moved into her apartment which was above a flower shop where she worked.
My mother struggled making ends meet and got a job as a nursing assistant at Peaceful Haven, an old folks home that still exists although it is very badly run down now.
Because she could not afford a baby sitter, my mother took me to work where I sat in the lounge and watched TV and read books. On her lunch breaks she took me across the street to Faulkner Park where she made out with Fred while I wandered around eating my sandwich.
But I quickly grew bored. I was 8 then, a bright young girl with an active imagination. I imagined doors in the sandbox, swings into the sky, doors to another world. And in the rooms of the old lost souls were more doors only waiting to be opened. I took those souls with me on my adventures and eased their loneliness and age with my contagious eagerness to believe anything.
And then a terrible thing happened to me, so terrible I could not speak of it. I was in hospital, unable to believe anymore and my old friends came to visit me and to believe for me.
I am 30 now, and as I write this and look back I wonder if I still believe. And yes, I do. Believing got me through that summer and believing got my father to come home again.