Swing

Swing By Anna Joseph There is a song from the past that I like a lot. It is a song addressed to a swing. For the past several months I have been listening to the song over and over again. The song describes a golden oak tree in the sky with golden leaves. We can touch the leaves of the golden oak tree if we swing. After listening to the song for a few months I felt like writing about the swings in my life. In my grandfather's house in Udayamperoor there was a swing. It was a rope that hung on the branch of a jackfruit tree or mango tree. The seat of the swing was a really smooth madal. A madal is the branch like thing on a coconut palm tree. The whole area is shady because there is a jackfruit tree, mango, guava and cashewnut trees. I remember the huge jackfruits that hung on the trunk of the jackfruit tree. I remember the ripe cashew fruits that fell on the ground and the ground strewn with plavila. Between the house and the place where the trees start there is lots of empty sand strewn space. The rope of the swing was hung from a very high branch. Yet if we sit on the swing our feet can touch the ground. We can do a half standing and half sitting position and we can go really backwards. Once we reach as far back as possible we can sit on the swing and stretch out our legs forward and the swing will go really up and our feet can touch the hanging on the high branches of nearby trees. We used to have contests on who could touch the leaves on the highest branch of nearby trees. Compared to my cousins I always never could touch my feet on high branches because I never lived in Udayamperoor. I only visited and stayed for a few days during summer vacation. I did not have practice on the swing that much. But on a swing trying to touch the high branches is only one way to swing. The other way to swing was to relax and lean on the rope and with your feet push gently backward and forward. The swing would never go that high but yet the swing would move gently forward and backward and you can feel the soft breeze caused by the movement of the swing on your face. It is the nicest feeling in the world. If I think back, I can remember how rough the coir rope felt in my palm as I clutched it, how soft and squishy the sand under my feet as I moved back and forward and how soft the breeze, and shady the whole place was. In my memory even during the hottest part of the day if you go to that part of my grandfather's house there is shade. Sometimes the swing dances when there is a wind in rhythmic motion backward and forward even if there is no child sitting on the swing.