Bodies in Motion

     Last Thursday, on a net suspended about 30 feet above a thin tumbling pad, on the way from a foam triangle-filled crawlspace to a twin set of wave slides, Clara made friends with a 3-year-old named Keira. I don't remember a lot of their first exchange, because I was trying to splay my limbs so that each of my feet and one hand rested on the net's side supports.  That way, the other hand would be free to grab Clara when the net broke.  Keira would have to fend for herself.
     The play structure took up part of a converted warehouse, and, besides its great height, was about 100 feet long.  It had three different slides and multiple foam-covered nooks, platform ladders, crawl spaces and nets.  Parents were encouraged to join their spawn in play, and many did, though none shared my sheen of cold brow sweat.
     We'd heard about this place from friends and decided to check it out while it was still too nasty and cold outside to go to the park.
     "Okay, guys, let's keep moving," I said, as Keira blithely sat back on her haunches on the net, regaling Clara with tales of being chased by a pretend dragon.
     Some sort of extreme gym for parents and a healthy sandwich bar took up another part of the warehouse. From time to time, Keira's dad, sweaty and bulging of bicep, came over to check on her from the gym portion, where he was bucking tractor tires across the floor and whipping large-gauge steel chains in what I imagine was the mother of all tricep and upper-back workouts.
     Clara, Keira and I finally followed a twisting tunnel to the top of the wave slides.  They were jointly called, "The Bronco Tsunami" (one was orange and one was blue).  Keira went down by herself; I went down with Clara on my lap.  She giggled all the way down and immediately wanted to go back up.  When we got to the platform ladder, I held my hands like a stirrup for her to step in so she wouldn't suffer the indignity of having me lift her up each successive platform (Keira, bless her, had figured out how to climb the side netting and so didn't require my help).
     At the top, for my child, I army-crawled under a low-slung foam roller, feeling a breeze where no breeze should blow as my jeans shimmied down my pelvis.  Putting my hands to my waist to keep them from slipping further.  Forced to use my chin to help further my progress along the tunnel.  Hoping Keira's dad had not come again to check on her.
     When we found ourselves at the top of the Tsunami slides again, Keira turned to Clara and said, "I can go down by myself," before shooting down the slide, blond hair streaming behind.  From my perspective, it was a breathtakingly ill-timed remark.
     Clara pushed me away and would have gone shooting down alone after Keira had I not maintained a fistful of the back of her sweater.  It was a moment of great parental portent.  When we had gone down the slide together, it had not seemed particularly fast.  But Clara was only two!  Yes, but Keira went down just fine and, though older, she and Clara seemed to me roughly the same size.
     "I go down by myself!" Clara shouted, wriggling furiously.
      Would I become  one of those parents who can't let go? Would I be one of those mothers who become volunteers in their child's high school so they can have lunch with them in the cafeteria every day? Who keep their forty-five-year-old child's bedroom exactly as it was when the child was eight, including stuffed animals, etc?  Who refer to their adult child as "Poopsie"?
     I let go of Clara's sweater.
     On the first bump of the slide, I saw a gap of air about four inches wide open between her bottom and the slide's surface.
     "Oh s#%*!" I yelled, propelling myself down the slide after her.
     On the second bump, she spun around so she was facing the side of the slide and on the third bump she lost all composure and landed on her back, arms and legs flapping wildly.  She came tumbling out the bottom, landing spread-eagle on the crash pad.
     Keira stood over her.  "WOW!" she said. "Are you okay?"
     "Oh, Honey!" I moaned as I came out the bottom immediately after.  I reached to pick her up but she furiously slapped my hands away.
     "NO!!" she thundered, standing up and hustling away from me and after Keira.  Now that they were on the floor, I could see Keira was a good three inches taller.  Clara was holding her shoulders in a stiff, hurt, angry way as she stalked away.  She tilted her head down so her hair screened her face, but a peek showed big blue eyes filled with tears and little pink lips trembling with emotion.
     She marched behind Keira to a play kitchen set up under one part of the play structure.  Something told me I'd best hang back and monitor from a distance.  Clara managed to gulp back all her tears in a few minutes and was soon fixing Keira a pretend bacon sandwich.  She didn't appear to be hurt physically, though it had been a mistake to let her go down the slide alone.  The bigger mistake, the bigger hurt, was that, by letting her go down alone and thus crash so spectacularly, and then by coming right after and trying to coddle and kiss her, I'd embarrassed her in front of her new friend.