A List of Things Seen at the Park During Quarantine:
- Kids climbing on the playground equipment while parents look on nervously, darting furtive glances over their shoulders (Week 1)
- City employees removing the nets from the tennis court
- Basketball nets tied off to the rims so nothing can get through
- A 10-inch hand-painted model rocket stuck in a tree
- A man with a 12-foot ladder trying to climb a 50-foot tree
- A man and little girl chucking rocks and sticks into the branches of a tree
- A woman craning her neck, staring up into a tree, muttering about a man
- Dozens of people lined up outside the community center, six feet apart, to pick up the breakfasts and lunches their kids would normally get at school, including a classmate of the little girl’s that she has yet to see on video calls with the class
- Playground equipment standing empty, caution tape flapping in the wind (Weeks 2-8)
- Countless dogs, often running through the park off-leash; for once, this does not bother the woman
- Families playing catch, badly
- Families playing soccer well
- Families playing with brand new puppies
- Kids playing basketball, having torn the nets down
- An old man playing tennis with an orange against a wall
- A kite shaped like a neon triceratops stuck in a tree
- Little libraries stuffed full with books that no one wants to touch
- A raccoon running around in broad daylight
- Basketball hoops blocked off with wooden planks
- A middle schooler turning head over heels on the basketball court in a human-sized hamster wheel
- Teenagers with skateboards and no shirts jumping off of a DIY ramp in the middle of the basketball court; they have a boombox, like it’s the nineties
- Something disemboweled in the soccer field, guts in a neat pile, perfectly intact
- A teenage neighbor running sprints
- An older neighbor jogging slowly
- A family the woman knows a little walking with a stroller; they were supposed to get together for dinner before the pandemic, but now she doesn’t say hi because it feels too complicated
- Kids climbing on the playground, over, under, and around the caution tape while parents watch on, unperturbed (Week 9)
- The little girl blowing every dandelion she get her little hands on, wishing over and over again for a dog
- A tween chasing a pure white hedgehog through the grass
- So many people the man, the woman, and the little girl know, all waving eagerly, eyes crinkling as they smile behind their masks
