The End of an Era

When Ryan and I moved into the first house we shared, we inherited the previous owners' swing set.  It was sturdy, solid wood, not the cheap stuff they sell in Costco that shimmies and shakes and disintegrates after a year or two but you still pay a month's mortgage for.  It had a couple of plastic swings, rings, a bar, a slide, and a big bench swing.  Before we had kids, we'd get a little tipsy and see how high we could swing.  When little baby Brynn came along and Ryan and I were clueless new parents, I'd sit with her in my arms on the big bench swing at 3am when all other efforts to get her to sleep failed.  

We couldn't bear to part with this magical pile of lumber when we upgraded to a bigger house and backyard, so Ryan literally cut it in half, stuffed it in a U-Haul, and, after two trips to get all of it, reassembled it in our new (and current) backyard.  

That swing set has been a fixture in our backyard ever since.  Countless cousins and friends and neighbors climbed and swung and hung from the apparatus that evolved as often as our children did.  That swing set was a lifeboat during my babysitting years, always there to help the Siyufy/Jones/Raftery kids get some energy out or help me lull them to sleep.  It was the epicenter of many a birthday party and summer cookout, it was how we measured a big snowfall and escaped cabin fever during hurricanes and noreasters, and it even became a classroom during the covid pandemic.  

And just as one rips off a band-aid, we decided as a family that it was time to pass it on to another, and we sold that beloved swing set on OfferUp to a young family of five last night.    Ryan had already disassembled it, and when the new owner arrived, he helped us maneuver it out of our backyard and onto his trailer.  Brynn was part of the muscle required to clear the fence, and it was almost too much for this mama's heart to handle.  

It's just a swing set.  But it's also not.  It's the end of an era.  An era I spent the first half of my life looking forward to.  An era full of so many firsts and so many fun times that it's a gut punch to watch it drive away on a trailer.  And just like a punch to the gut, it'll take a little bit of breathing in and breathing out to realize that we're all just fine.  And that the lawn just got way easier to mow.  Once it actually grows back.