Unless the weather meant certain death, recess meant we were released out into the playground.

There were many metal things sprouting out of the sand and crabgrass of the playground of Keith Elementary school when I was growing up. A giraffe, a rocket, a climbing frame, monkey bars, slides (one big, one small) – scorching in the sun, frosted in the winter. Woe betide any fool who stuck her tongue on these structures in the Michigan winter. Of course, a double dog dare can never be refused, unless one cares nothing for honor, so these things will happen.

There was also a boring thing, three bars of varying heights, I don’t know what it was for – pull ups? A sadistic gift from a disgruntled alumnus, perhaps. Also a set of gymnast rings that weren’t much fun for even the most creative and athletic among us. A couple of giant half-buried tractor tires that smelled of pee. And big swings for twisting in mid air, or for making the playground monitors (“safeties”) gasp by doing the spider with a friend of the opposite sex, or for jumping off at the highest you could go hoping to escape gravity and fly away… or at least land on your feet.

There was a kickball pitch rutted into the dirt. Empty fields for snap-the-whip.

There was a patch of asphalt spray-painted with grids for playing games, where boring girls milled around talking about boring things like hair and boys. Unless they wanted to trade stickers, I avoided them. I liked to climb on top of the monkey bars, grab the rungs from underneath, and flip myself over. My party trick.

Another trick of mine, performed only once, involved me going down the small slide standing up. Bystanders were impressed. Then I reached the patch of thick ice at the bottom, my moon boots went out from under me and I fell back, cracking my arm on the edge of the slide. The crowd exploded with laughter. Dazed, I went to sit on a swing for a while.

My arm didn’t feel so good. Well, if it still hurts in a couple days, I thought, I’ll tell Mom and Dad.

The recess bell rang. We shuffled inside and began to shed our coats. Queasy, I shifted my timeline. If it still hurts when I get home, I thought, I’ll tell Mom and Dad.

We had a substitute teacher that day. I really wasn’t feeling very well. I rested my arm on my desk. Eventually I raised the working one. “My arm hurts,” I said. A collective gasp sucked the air out of the room as everyone stared at the half of my arm laying out of alignment with the rest.

Later, they would all sign my plaster cast.

A mustard yellow tornado warning siren towered in the corner of the playground. There were no fences but wild fields full of knapweed and marsh, abandoned agricultural land where we were NOT SUPPOSED TO GO. If you got caught breaking the rules, you had to stand against the wall for the remainder of recess. There were fields across the road, too. There were a lot of fields around there when I was growing up.

The school is still there, and its playground. But the fields are gone along with their ruderals and fairytale oaks and mint-scented swamps, along with the hopes of running through them. They have been replaced by neighbourhoods of identically bland houses I would never live in even if I could afford to.

What kind of person would I have become if I grew up there now instead of when I did? Maybe that person would not be so different, a nomad in search of wild places she never knew, rather than a nomad in search of wild places to replace those that have been lost. Even if I ever do find a place where I belong, maybe I will only belong there for a little while. Then the recess bell will ring, and it will be time to move on. Ever lostward.