to the moon

V is on the playground. Maybe in the sandbox, or the big orange slide that corkscrews around. There are metal bars she climbs, standing at the top shouting for everyone to look at her. "I'm the king of the world!" I howl, pretending to be her as I hold her legs steady.  She repeats the phrase, in her soft messy English. She does not not like to climb down, so she leans back into me and I help her float back, towards the forgotten toys on the ground.

Sometimes tiny green apples fall from the trees. I find them in odd patterns, nesting in the corner of the sandbox. A secret treasure someone left behind.

There are handfuls of old people, typically women that sit on the benches. Faces nod hello, a glazed-over recognition and a mental note if you do not reply to them. It is amazing how easily you can be labelled as rude here. There must be secret notebooks with lists of trespasses, at least whispers behind backs.

The swings are her favorite, as they wobble and squeak with each pass. She asks to go faster, higher. "To the trees" as they say here, or if you are really ambitious, "to the moon."

This is an entire world, a microcosm of the neighborhood, maybe of Russian society. The innocent play, the reckless act, the absent parent, the children acting like animals more than people and the little ones oblivious to everything just looking for attention. The single parents, the exhausted mothers and every so often a father shows up and there are two to swing the little one, two pairs of hands to catch them and run in circles while the dust rises, while those apples fall in soft plump rhythm to the screams and the laughter, the tears, the joy, the reckless abandon of a Russian playground in late summer.