Parker played with five friends today at a place designed for the imagination of children. Nostalgia washed like a wave as I remembered the day years ago my grandparents took me somewhere similar. A small neighborhood market stocked with plastic bananas and rubber-handled child-sized shopping baskets took me back to the day I'd been found felicitously ringing up similar manufactured produce and miniature cardboard cereal boxes with my older sister in another place, another time. The kids played for hours in a cafe, hospital, ambulance, synagogue, book store, park, and music studio all kid-sized. Heidi, her sisters, and I talked of college education and career plans made once and altered since, self-help books, and pop culture's current most popular literature. Art class begun at 3:00. Project 'Packing Peanuts' entailed brushing styrofoam pieces with marker-tainted (in Luke and Alexis's case) or fresh water and then sticking them to paper or each other. Parker lasted about three minutes. The museum had begun to empty out and it was time to say 'good-bye'. We left and finished the raspberries and blueberries from lunch on the way home. Parker fell asleep not long after and I set to work on a writing project. Another day, another play date.
