At the age of two I discovered swinging. When I was four, I acquired the freedom and physical ability to swing on my own in my backyard. The feeling that one's body gets when it lifts up with the narrow seat
that carries them into the heavens was an excruciating craving of mine. I sang as I swung, my lungs bursting forth with air produced by the momentum of my body's movements. I was a scientific miracle; a force of nature. I was flying and singing, like the angels at Jesus' birth.
I started school, and they had the most magnificent swings on our playground. They sat atop the steep grassy hill, course wood chips beneath their shadows. The seats were flexible, and a happy yellow color stained brown from years of dirty tennis shoes belonging to the brave children who stood on them. They hung by torturous chains that pinched your fingers if you grabbed them too tightly, and squeaked as you moved, the pitches ascending and descending with your movements. When multiple children swung, it sounded beautifully orchestrated, the squeaks bringing a minor air to the piece, the children's joy, major. It was the music of the angels.
When you looked out, you could see the school roof and the rest of the sloping playground. I would stare up at the nearby trees, pretending I was entangled and leaping from the branches. Years later, I discovered if I only looked further, the mountains were generous enough to reveal their peaks over the distant skyline.
One day, in the middle of my elementary school years, I leaned back on the swings too far and came up too fast - the familiar feeling of nausea overtook me. I was upset; this glorious machine had betrayed me, made me fall ill. I interrupted the perfect arc I swung in by dragging my heels and toes into the wood chips. A curious boy on the swing next to me told me that if I closed my eyes when I came up from leaning back, I would not get dizzy - something about inertia; physics I did not understand. I tried it; he was right.
I escaped to these swings on the weekends and summers. There are some days when our tired spirits just need to fly away, and, for me, those days were plenty. At some point in my high school years, I began searching for value and purpose - these swings provided my temporary answer. Because I was flying. My broken and bruised body was lifted by some grand force that I could not even describe or comprehend - it was as if the angels of the swings had given me the wings I needed, if only for a moment.
I took a couple people to these swings to show them the magic that they held. The first was my best friend. She did not like the swings like I did - they made her dizzy and nauseous. I tried to tell her that when I was in elementary school, a curious boy told me that if you closed you eyes when you came up from leaning back, you would not be dizzy. She never tried it.
That curious boy was the second person I brought to the swings, when he was eighteen and I seventeen. He was no longer a boy, but not yet a grown up. But I loved him. We would sit on the swings for hours, holding hands and telling stories, pausing so that we could fly away into the sky together, speechless as the breath tore out of our lungs.
The curious boy became a man and is no longer mine to hold. But I sometimes go to the swings, anyway, and talk to him, holding out my hand to the ghost he left in my memories. I used to think he ruined the magic of the swings for me, because I can no longer go on them without feeling heartbroken. But then I remember that if I only look a bit further, the mountains peek over the skyline, and if I only go a bit higher, I feel like I am soaring. Even the brokenhearted can still pretend they are angels.
