Driving east, I could look in the rearview mirror and see my charge, safely buckled. We usually drove without talking, accompanied only by the hum of a pop radio station and the air conditioning.
As the car slid across State Line Rd., from Kansas to Missouri, potholes and narrow lanes reminded me of the lower property values in this part of the city. The houses were still imposing, the people still well-to-do, but old Kansas City enjoyed a laidback ambience that the city government was glad to keep up by neglecting improvements.
The bumps finally subsided as I turned into the narrow lot. We got out, and immediately before us lay the rolling hills and shady trees of Loose Park.
When I took a summer job as a nanny for seven-year-old Sarah last year, I planned to take her to this park frequently. It sat only a few minutes from her home in Kansas City’s most posh suburb, and it had all sorts of diversions to supplement my creativity in planning activities for the day.
Though I had expected to go to Loose Park, I had not expected to relive my past every time. Going with Sarah, seeing this place through the eyes of a child who reminded me very much of myself, made me trace with precision my many experiences there when I was her age, and all those that she still had to look forward to.
Nearly every week I was with Sara we packed up the picnic basket, complete with child-friendly juice boxes and peanut butter or ham sandwiches, grabbed the zebra-print comforter and dragged both to the same grassy knoll.
There had been so many other picnics over the years, just feet from that spot. My best friends and I brought a baguette and a bottle of sparkling grape juice to celebrate the brilliantly sunny afternoon of our last day of high school. The baguette, always smeared with Nutella, became a staple of every summer afternoon with those girls, as four or five of us, now scattered across the country, piled so close together on an eternally too-small blanket to read and analyze the characters of our schoolmates.
Lying on the blanket next to me, Sarah insisted on hearing every detail about my boyfriend, Alex, as I texted him to arrange dinner plans. I remembered coming to this park with him not long before. We sat on a stone bench designed for two, and he held me while I chattered nervously. An older woman saw us and smiled, and I wondered what kind of couple we made.
By the last time I visited the park with Sarah, Alex and I had broken up, but I didn’t have the heart to tell her, so I just kept answering each question as if nothing had happened.
Sarah was easy-going and lacked the frantic energy of other children. Often, it was difficult even to coax her into taking the little exercise her mother required. She was usually happy reading the American Girl series or taking pictures on my camera phone. I agreed that it was nicer to battle the mosquitoes from a blanket in the shade than in the open sun, but duty and the charms of the vast park made me drag Sarah away.
We walked to the rose garden, where she and her neighbor, Hannah, made clover chains, tying the flowers together into wreaths and bracelets just I had done a decade ago. I halfheartedly tied together a few, content to take in the beauty and fragrance of the garden.
The girls finished their project, picking a few more clovers for the ride home, and we hiked back over the hill to the pond. We had a little bread for the ducks, and I helped them distribute it, becoming nostalgic for my favorite childhood activity. My father and I had disposed of countless hotdog buns, crumbs, and occasionally even a few slices of Pepperidge Farm white bread at this spot. We had walked across the little footbridge and eaten McDonald’s under the willow. I hope to do it again.
Just as the girls finished up the bread, lightning and light rain threatened our outing. We ran to the car and quickly left the park behind.
