Crying at the Trampoline Park

The "you'll miss these years" people were right all along.

On our second day in Tampa, we went to the beach. I love Miami beaches, but the water on the west coast of this state is just better. Clear as a pool. So clear we could make out all the fish swimming around us, and try, for hours, unsuccessfully, to catch one with our bare hands.

I brought my notebook with me and a novel. Aspirational items. I never know when I will actually get a quiet moment to myself. When I do, it feels like winning the lotto. I hit on this day. I sat in a beach chair, submerged in this holy water. My kids were swimming around, playing with my beautiful wife and my healthy mother. I felt grateful.

The Puerto Rican side of my family is 50 heads deep in Tampa, but some elders who’ve been something like superheroes my whole life are experiencing health issues and growing weaker before my eyes. I’ve come to realize that things I’ve taken for granted for years now—like life advice mixed between shots at family gatherings, or arroz con gandules waiting for me when I arrive from the five-hour trek from Miami—are not going to last forever.

So there, in the water, I wrote a few lines to try and capture the moment.

#

The next morning was rough. The kids slept in and were off their routines and in a trying mood. There were tantrums, tears, yelling—all the familiar hallmarks of a family vacation.

My wife and I made plans to head to a nearby trampoline park—a spot we’ve been going to for years during these regular pilgrimages to Tampa; a spot that is always empty, and guaranteed to entertain our kids for two hours, with limited interaction from us.

I packed two novels, thinking of our previous visit to Tampa, when we’d gone to this trampoline park multiple times over the course of a week, and I blissfully finished reading a whole novel while sitting on a massage chair.

The only issue was my notebook. I couldn’t find it anywhere. I searched and searched, but time was of the essence because little kids hit a witching hour sometime after noon, so I grabbed a fresh notebook from my bag. I figured the other notebook had stayed at the beach. Oh well.

#

Everything went as advertised at the trampoline park: The place was empty, and my kids were thrilled. The massage chairs were taken by other parents, but it was fine. We set up on some padded benches instead.

The kids ran off and hurled themselves onto the trampolines. I whipped out my fresh notebook. I had missed a couple days of writing already, and I was starting to get the itch. Do you get it? I do. I go a couple days without putting something down, anything, and I get all bent out of shape.

I started thinking about this lost notebook of mine, and the fact that, apart from that little beach scene I had written the day before, I really couldn’t remember what was in it. This thing I’d been carrying around everywhere for a couple months, writing in daily, and I didn’t even know what was in it.

Then I thought about all the notebooks I’ve kept in my life, hundreds of them. Most of them lost or discarded; forgotten. I only keep a few around, ones that I know just happened to have documented big moments in my life: like seeing my father for the first time in 15 years, or making a relief trip to my family’s hometown in Loíza, Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, or running into my childhood best friend from the Bronx, high as a kite, nodding off at a bus stop.

But even so, I never look at these either.

Which made me wonder: If all this writing could disappear without me missing it, why had I written it down in the first place?

#

I circled around the question, figuring it might lead to an essay, or an insight, or something—it didn’t matter. It just felt good to write.

At some point my train of thinking was broken by the sight of a little boy, probably 18 months old, stumbling around on the trampolines with his mom and dad. They were all bright-eyed, smiling, and optimistic, the way parents of one who haven’t gone through the toddler years are.

I was reminded of the very first time I ever brought my firstborn to this trampoline park, when he was around the same age. I remembered paying our entrance fee, and not understanding why the only thing he wanted to do was run up and down the ADA ramp.

I looked for my boy now, launching himself fearlessly from a swing that drops you into a pit of foam. I looked back at the little baby with his parents. Then I started to cry.

Before I had kids, I would go multiple years without ever shedding a tear. But now, an old photo of my kids that Google decides to randomly resurface gets the waterworks flowing. The real-life version of that old photo, even more so.

I cried and then my wife cried and then we found ourselves there again, talking about how big our kids were getting. They’re turning six and four soon, and for some reason it is only now that I understand why parents of older kids always say to me: “you’re going to miss these years.”

For a long time, I’d think they were either lying or had selective memory about how hard the toddler years are. But it turns out they were fucking right.

I realized, seeing this little kid in front of me that my son will never ever be that little again, and neither will my daughter. I realized this was one of the last times we’d ever get to interact with this version of who they are right now. I realized these little moments, these little memories, like the one I had of my son on that ADA ramp, will be all I have to hold on to.

When we collected ourselves, my wife and I looked at all of this stuff we’d brought with us. We thought about our grand plan to be left alone while our kids were occupied, and we looked at our kids having fun and realized what we were missing.

I put the notebook down and forgot about the stupid little essay I was trying to work out. My wife put down her novel. We put on our own jumping socks, paid the extra fee and I sprinted to the foam pit where my kids were playing and hurled myself in.

Even now, days later, I can still see the big smile on their faces when they saw me. Maybe that is a moment worth writing down somewhere. Maybe in a notebook I’ll later lose and never see again.

Peace,
Andrew