Waving goodbye at the door, Bill watched the boy marching across the over-planted
courtyard in the direction of the train station for his commute to summer camp.
The highschooler had just finished the freshman year and already out-grown dad in
size. He had grown serious, too, at least in appearance. The kid preferred dark
clothes and a clean haircut and kept a solemn face no matter how often dad
reminded him to lighten up: "Remember to relax and smile. It warms up others and
steels yourself. Try it. It's magic!"
Lingering briefly at the hallway as he closed the door behind, Bill checked
mentally if he walked the walk and the answer was yes but not until recently.
Life only made better sense in hindsight, he thought with a bit of nostalgia,
and one could not expect a 16-year-old to behave like an adult.
The weather continued to be perfect in June. The wind was gentle and cool. A
couple of mornings in a week could be cloudy but they all cleared up before
noon. The redbud and magnolia had finished flowering and it was the turn for the
mimosa, hibiscus, and oleander.
Bill discovered the jacaranda, which turned out to be quite popular in the
area. On his way back from the coffee shop one morning and passing a simple
single-level house in the middle of an old block, he was overtaken by the canopy
of trumpet-shaped violet flowerets high above the front yard. He had paced on
that street almost daily in the past two years and yet this was the first time
he noticed and he was struck by its otherworldly beauty. Silhouetted against a
blue sky, the smoky bluer blossom seemed to point to a fabled remote place and
invoked a longing that could never be satisfied. At that moment, Bill wished all
the trees and shrubs be replaced with this arboreal wonder. He almost brought up
this point at the park opening event.
June 22nd was a Wednesday and the tiny park 200 yards away from his house was
finally completed. On about half an acre of prime real estate, the city had
managed to squeeze in a lawn, a kid's playing area, and a few benches under pear
trees. The official opening kicked off around 10:00am.
It was a big turnout, mostly of kids and women. Ethnically, he would say 85%
white and 15% latinos. Bill saw almost no Asians despite that nearly all his
immediate neighbors were engineers from the East. He found himself talking to
two mothers, one blonde and the other brunette, in their 40s behind a booth.
"It took some time." He started "It's worth the waiting, though."
"Yes. It was one year of planning and one and a half years of construction."
The chirpy women sounded they were in the know all along.
"Who decided what to put in the park?"
"The residents. See those flowers?" the blonde pointed to the painted structures
in the middle of the playground "They were the residents' idea."
"When did this happen? Is it too late to install some pull-up bars?"
"Oh. It was in the design phase. We put out notices all over social media." The
dark-haired woman smiled somewhat defensively.
The fact was Bill abhorred those giant metal poles with flower-shaped heads
painted red, yellow, and blue. They wouldn't look half as pretty in one year,
he was sure. Kids and parents might disagree but, to Bill, they crowded the
space and contributed nothing but their distinct cartoonish look. And who needed
the pear trees?! There was enough variety already and it was a theme that was
needed. How about pulling all the trees up and replacing them with, for example,
jacarandas? He almost blurted out.
He hated social media, too, which these days made him an eccentric curmudgeon
and in occasions like this an uninformed dimwit. Working in the IT industry, he
blamed the Internet in general for giving people an unhealthy independence. He
chose to ignore the irony by denouncing and benefiting from the information age
at the same time.
