I’d forgotten how to play.
I didn’t notice it until I had a kid. It’s not like one day I just packed up my board games or locked my toys away. Play just slipped out of my life gradually, and I was too busy to miss it.
Play used to be my whole world.
I grew up as an only child. With no siblings to build Legos or play “house” with, I made my own fun.
I played Monopoly alone. I was the dog and the horse, rolling for both and buying property for both. (The dog usually won. I suspect favoritism.) I won every game. I also lost every game.
When I tired of real estate, I went outside and kicked a soccer ball against the cement wall behind our house, over and over, for hours. The wall was a tireless opponent who never got bored or complained about my aim.
And I read. I read constantly, slipping into new worlds whenever the one I lived in felt too small. I remember hiding under the covers with a flashlight escaping to Narnia and other mystical places.
▸ Looking back, I think I was escaping more than boredom. Long before I had words for being gay, I knew I didn’t quite fit the world I lived in. In books and in games of my own making, I didn’t have to.
I’ve been thinking about that creative kid lately, which led me to reading about Ryōkan Taigu, an 18th-century Zen monk and poet from Japan. He was a fully enlightened master. I imagined him sitting under a tree, alone, meditating.
But he spent many of his days playing games with village children and writing poems about it.
“My pocket is full of marbles, my heart is full of joy. I play with the children all day long, forgotten by the world. Who says Zen is difficult? Look at the children jumping rope!” he wrote.
Jesus, too, delighted in children, according to numerous Bible passages.
Somewhere in adulthood, I stopped playing, though. I work too much. I think too much. I answer emails nonstop. I grade endless papers, and then plan the next thing. Even exercise, which once was a kind of play for me, has become a contest with myself. I try to go faster, farther.
All that’s OK, but somewhere in all that striving, the girl who loved playing Monopoly against herself got lost.
I suspect that’s a familiar story for a lot of LGBTQ people. Many of us learned early to watch ourselves, to edit and to stay on guard. Play asks for the opposite. It asks you to let go.
Then came Stanley.
My son is 9 months old, and he has no interest in my to-do list (though he does love my iPhone). He wants me with him down on the floor. So that’s where I hang out.
As a kid I played “house” by myself. I never imagined the real version would come with two moms. Some evenings my wife, Traci, and I both end up on the carpet, two grown women army-crawling through a nylon tunnel while Stanley shrieks like it’s the best show in town.
I crawl through play tunnels on my belly. I hide behind a dining room chair and pop back out, and he laughs as if peek-a-boo never gets old. I spin fidget spinners with him. I stack toys into towers so he can knock them down, and then I stack them again.
I admit though, these moments are brief. I’m still learning how to stop worrying about work and how to keep my mind from drifting to my inbox while I’m lying on the carpet. Some days I’m not very good at it.
But some days it really works. For a few minutes there are no emails to answer. There’s just a baby, a stack of cups and lots of laughter.
Stanley is growing up with two moms who are still relearning how to play. I hope he never has to unlearn it.
In those moments, I think I finally understand Ryōkan. My pocket is full of marbles. My heart is full of joy.
Tracy Simmons is an award-winning journalist specializing in religion reporting and digital entrepreneurship. She is a Professor of Journalism at WSU and executive director at FaVS News, a digital journalism start-up covering religion news and commentary in the Pacific Northwest. Learn more at: https://favs.news/
