Wednesdays

I may have mentioned our regular Wednesday lunchtime playgroup thingy before. It's a community group of parents and caregivers who meet up with their kids at the playground if the weather's good, or in a room in one of the community buildings if it's bad. (We get the use of the room for free, as long as nobody else needs it, thanks to some long-ago donation of toys that we and other kids can use.) There's a listserv and a Facebook page too, but the people who show up on Wednesdays are the really the core of the group.

The playdate officially starts at 11.00 and goes on till about 1pm or whenever the last people leave, though there's a major influx just after 11.30, when the nursery school across the road lets out. We bring lunches of varying levels of healthiness, and the kids do what kids do, and we get to talk to other adults; and nobody minds if you have to leave the table mid-sentence to go and disentangle someone from the monkey bars or if your toddler steals all their toddler's snacks. (Well, the toddlers might mind, but the parents are gracious.) Everyone keeps an eye on everyone else, and there's an understanding that the general rules of engagement are the same for all the children.

On mornings like this, when Mabel ran away at least twice and was caught by someone else before I'd even figured out what was going on, I am more than grateful to my village. In return, I introduced a 22-month-old to my pineapple and later headed several two-year-olds off at the pass when they scrambled up the hill and in the general direction of the road.

Every year around this time I start looking at the group and thinking wistfully of the children who won't be with us next year. As a new generation of babes-in-arms grow in to cruisers who can navigate the bottom of a slide or hog the baby swings like their brothers and sisters before them, and this season's toddlers become next season's fully-fledged playground consumers, those who are turning five before September are not long for this world. Next year they'll be gone to the land known as Kindergarden, where the days are long and lunch is always indoors. If they don't have younger siblings to carry the flag, their parents are gone from our group too, to that mysterious world of PTA meetings and recess and homework where we can't follow until our time comes.

Next year I'll be straddling both dimensions, still attending our Wednesday get-togethers, but with only Mabel, who as a three year old, will be right in the middle of the steps-of-stairs of kids (except when she's heading the escape posse). And Monkey will have graduated.