Time is measured in a variety of ways – a grandfather clock ticking away year after year in the front hallway, an Apple Watch that not only marks time but also records the wearer’s heartbeat, blood pressure and steps taken.
Then there are the subtle ways – our hair that slowly turns from solid auburn to silver or the wrinkles that weren’t there a few years ago but now define our faces.
This week, I realized a back yard marks the passage of time.
Growing up, we lived next door to my grandparents. Next to their house was the “big yard” where family gathered every Sunday afternoon for a fun game of wiffle ball.
Our uncles taught us the game and allowed us to score runs around the make-shift bases. We cousins have fabulous memories of those impromptu games, all played in the big yard.
I went back to visit as an adult, and the yard that once seemed gigantic was actually small.
Grass now covered the bases, and those cheers and laughter were merely specters in my memory.
When my boys were toddlers, our back yard was filled with Little Tykes and Playskool riding toys. Blow-up wading pools filled out the space in the summer until, the biggest big-kid gift of all, a swing set went up.
My boys didn’t realize what a treat it was to have a swing set in their back yard. Growing up, our back yard was only big enough for a clothes line and a small patch of grass.
Didn’t matter because we could go to Oak Leaf Park where there were a dozen swings and slides and, our favorite, the now-banished merry-go-round.
But our inexpensive metal swing set was the highlight of our young family’s life in the afternoons.
Our boys would try for hours to see if they could swing high enough to do a loop-the-loop over the top, back to where they started.
Afternoons were spent seeing who could jump off the swing and land the farthest away from the letting-go point.
But time passes, and we replaced the swing set with a wooden fort where adventures were created in the covered sand box underneath the floor of the fort.
A ladder allowed the boys to climb up onto an enclosed area where they’d pretend they were pirates or figuring out how they could catch the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus.
About the time they outgrew the fort, we added a trampoline. The boys found they could do front flips, back flips and land on their rears and bounce back up.
The trampoline was popular all the way through their teenage years because they’d sneak out onto the roof of the garage, jump on the trampoline and bounce into the pool.
But teenagers leave home for college and their own lives. We left the trampoline in the yard until the springs rusted, and we had to take it down. The fort was a gift to a young family that needed a place for their growing children.
Then our grandchildren arrived, and we realized we needed to start the process all over again. In went a swing set, complete with a slide and teeter-totter, and my husband happily weed-eated around the four poles.
For the past few months, the swing set sat unused because our grandchildren outgrew the swings and slide. This week, the disassembled set went to the recycling center, and my husband finished putting together a new trampoline this afternoon.
The back yard was once again filled with the laughter of children, and I realized what goes around comes around.
The pendulum came back to where we started so many years ago but, this time around, I’m going to enjoy every minute until our back yard is once again quiet.
This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.