This week’s story is Roxaboxen by Alice Mclerran and illustrated by Barbara Cooney. I am struck by the disconnect between a sort of nostalgic, idealized affirmation of the type of childhood play experience depicted in Roxaboxen, and the deep seated fear, aversion, disdain and nonchalant willingness to consign this type of play to an impossible place in the adult’s imagination. It’s kind of depressing. Nevertheless, as long as some adults make alliances with children’s innate sense freedom and make a commitment to children’s untrammeled desire to play and mess around with the world, there will be hope that the future will not be written within the narrow confines of the adult past. Beyond that, children themselves have an agency that eludes adult control and policing as the kids themselves attempt to read the world and rewrite culture.
Near where I lived in California, in the center of a very master planned community, was an Eden called Adventure Playground. It was a place with building materials and tools to make forts, water and hoses to make mud slides and lots of other things for kids to use as their imaginations led them. It was a great model especially in a place where the environment was so strictly controlled. Your story reminded me of my free play as a child back in the days when we had woods and even vacant lots to explore.