My first sober summer I worked at a day camp at a park in Greenpoint. I was covered in dirt and glitter and there was a sliver of numb skin on the left side of my left foot from the tourniquet that was my Tevas. In the mornings I circled up with 12 2-7 year olds and we stretched our arms to the sun and sang banana-fana-fo-fana. Aurora and Ever and two Robins and Lincoln and Roman and Amadeo. I read books about a T. Rex at a car dealership and an insecure chameleon. They ran through the sprinklers, skinned their knees, and took “nature pees.” One day, the park’s resident hawk devoured a squirrel carcass over their heads and none of them noticed. I collected its bright red remains with a yellow shovel and tossed it in a bush. We made fairy houses and mud pies and beaded bracelets and dream catchers. I was never hungover. I never thought about getting high. I watched them get scared, frustrated, overwhelmed, happy, and calm over and over again. I rubbed the backs of the ones who needed extra help regulating their emotions.
Because I was that kid, and I still am that kid.
Who doesn’t like the feeling of soggy packing peanuts or wet shaving cream and worries over my numb foot and that the hawk is going to snatch up the 18-pound Aurora, and obsesses over the fragility of my fairy house roof and is still trying to find how to operate in a way that it is the middle ground between “fuck it or fear.”
Two-year-old Robin had fun in the water until she didn’t. Then she needed to be out immediately. Out of her soggy socks that earlier she’d protested “must stay on” and into her size-too-big Elsa jelly shoes. I’d hold her wet body and try to sway away her shivers in a patch of midday sun. I’d watch the change in her brow when the feeling started to pass and then she’d catapult out of my arms and into the playground. Play through the chill. Play through the fear. She’d place a scabbed bandaid-clad leg on the rope bridge muttering to herself “I can do this I can do this.” She didn’t know the difference between pain and discomfort so whenever she’d sit on the concrete she’d go “My leg hurts” when really, her leg just felt sort of strange from this ground feeling harder than the grass ground.
When I was 3 four or 5 I took a combo jazz, ballet, tap class. I remember sitting on a long wooden bench outside the studio with a woman I did not know but knew to be in charge. She crammed my toes into the tiny Teflon tap shoes and I remember the black shiny bit rubbing against the back of my ankle. And then my other ankle. I cried and the woman gave me a mad look. I did not want to wear the shoes. But I do think I wanted to dance.
I never knew I was in active addiction until I got out of it. The tantrums come and there’s nothing to numb and my shoes must stay on. An internal or external hissy fit bubbles up from the most tender and terrified part of my little child's soul. That is no different from the soul I have now. And the soul I’ll have in 60 years.
Little Robin followed me like a shadow. The hawk only circled over our space. I was terrifically agitated, ridiculously happy, and tremendously calm. It’s circle time and it's snack. It’s sprinklers. It’s lunch. It’s art and it’s play. Mommies and daddies will pick you up soon.