Equipment by Kompan.
Surface: rubber.
When my daughter and I arrived at the Cawthra Playground, I was surprised by how empty the park was. It was mid-afternoon on a beautiful summer day. Where was everybody?
I wondered if maybe this playground probably doesn’t attract many people from further than a couple of blocks away. The train tracks to the south and the hill to the north might act as natural neighbourhood boundaries, placing this playground in a bit of an in-between zone. Or maybe, like me, people just don’t like the Kompan brand of playground equipment, which always feels like it’s trying to be more fun than it is. The playground equivalent of Comic Sans font.
And then, as I was wondering all this and taking photos of the equipment, two strange things happened.
First, I noticed that we were not alone in the park. When we arrived the place had seemed completely deserted, but I suddenly became aware of another person: a young woman way over by the fence, who was painting what appeared to be an extremely detailed, almost photorealistic, painting of a kiwi. See if you can find her hiding in the panoramic photo in this post.
The second thing I noticed was that I had lost track of where my daughter was. Why wasn’t she on the climbers? Then I turned and saw her on the swings, practising the moves she had learned at circus camp the week prior.
She was dangling from the swing like it was a trapeze, or maybe silks, her limbs outstretched in that six-year-old way that is both graceful and completely ridiculous at the same time.
I stood there for a moment, an enigmatic kiwi painter to my right, and my daughter’s ongoing shenanigans to my left, and took a quick second to ponder how my life had ended up in this place.
I was so distracted by it all that I must have deleted almost all the photos I took, except – somehow – for one of my daughter pretending to be a high-wire circus superstar.
Sorry about that. To make up for it, please enjoy this video Kompan put together when the playground was first opened.
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