Speaking of Parks...

According to a recent report by the Trust for Public Land, Los Angeles plummeted to the 90th spot out of 100 major metropolitan areas throughout the U.S. for its park system. If you aren't an outdoorsy person or don't have children or pets, this might not phase you. The debate on health concerns associated with outdoor activity may seem academic to some adults. But many in the inner city do not have yards or outdoor spaces and the debate is no debate at all. 

In the excerpt from my son's and my book below, my son articulates the importance of public parks to a child in crisis. 

Pros & Cons of Family: Chapter 3 ~ The Park Life, The Good Life

I’ve always had affinity to parks. The further west, the more elaborate the parks. They were, each one of them, an oasis carved out of, or perhaps carved into, the concrete jungles that were the cement obstacle courses of life in the inner city of Los Angeles. At least for a Black boy. At least for me.

The parks were clean and green, with playgrounds, soccer and softball fields, basketball courts, shuffleboard for the old Jewish guys, and singing ice-cream trucks nearby. In the parks, I could observe what looked like functional families: two parents, a couple of kids, everyone smiling, laughing, and enjoying each other. I was drawn to them, and I wanted to be like them. Sometimes I would pretend to be one of them. It made me feel cleaner; more loved; more whole; a part of something more stable, more predictable, more Leave it to Beaver, more In Living Color, less ghetto-reality-TV.

I didn’t sign up for my life —the strife of being a kid, having to grow up fast. I didn’t sign up for weekends without my Father, absent at so many crucial moments, leaving me on my own to wonder what could be competing for his attention and winning all of his time away from us? The quest to find the answer to that question eventually became an unwanted obsession.

But now? I simply felt abandoned by him. My Father would not directly hurt me, but his neglect did hurt me. No, I didn’t sign up for that life.

The park, fused with a myriad of activities —toddlers crying, bikes riding, balls bouncing, old men shuffle-boarding, swings swinging, hop-scotchers singing, double-dutchers jumping, kids cart-wheeling, card game dealing, and babies squealing —is serenity. Parks are peaceful. I signed up for Park Life.

Circa 1990, summertime, we were visiting our grandparents'; and today, at the “Duck Park”, one of my top three parks, mainly because it is 600 miles away from L.A. Dover Park had ducks in the pond, so it is the Duck Park in my frame of reference.

We were with Gram and Poppy. It feels like home, being with them. I feel like a proper Park Kid with a Park Family in these circumstances.

I rode my bike for a while, flying —pedaling fast, veering onto the grass so I didn’t have to compete for sidewalk space with other kids and bikes. This small park, with rolling hills of perfectly manicured, sloping, grassy green carpets, neat as untouched snow, was one of my favorite things about it. The scenery was straight out of a National Geographic. I know because my Moy subscribed. She was full of cultural longing. She inherited a kind of curiosity and joy of life from her parents. She had a good childhood and an easy come, easy go kind of existence. A different life than the one we are living now.

My second favorite thing about this park? Ducks. I’ve always had an affinity for ducks. You might say, “What the fuck?” but who doesn’t like Donald Duck? Ducks provide comic relief; they represent a non-threatening aspect of Mother Nature in the animal kingdom. Ducks are harmless, or so they seemed then. Strutting and quacking and diving all day, seemingly living for endless play. My life screamed for harmlessness; I was attracted to their ways.

I threw little pieces of bread into the pond. I got closer to them, and that’s when I went in. I knew how to swim, but what was downright terrifying was that a whole duck family was about to make me sink—pecking my neck, swimming around my head, quacking at me, wanting bread. They got pretty crazy. The next thing I knew, Poppy was in the water, saving me from being duck fodder. He dragged me up the muddy incline and away from the slaughter.

This incident shattered any perception I had of ducks being the slightest bit humorous or friendly.

Up to this point in my life, no absolute innocence had been lost; just the presence of a foreboding and an almost certainty that something Satan-awful was going to happen in the God forsaken city of Los Angeles.

That foreboding was starting to strangle me, the thick rope used by the puppet master to jerk me around like a minstrel on ice, slipping and sliding with no control, losing my life. These ducks confirmed that the downward slope was real; I was sliding down, not up, the hill. I dangled in the balance, hands gripping the knot tied in the noose, hands attempting to untie and loosen the cord that was used to hang me. Why were those ducks so damned angry? I can’t breathe!!

“Don’t get confused between my personality and my attitude.

My personality is who I am. My attitude depends on who you are.” Donald Duck.