After daycare each day this past summer, I would take my daughter, Lucy, to this little park in Carroll Gardens where she would run out the day. A special section just for toddlers includes the usual equipment, with a bridge, an incline, a stone elephant, little swings, and a sprinkler (which Lucy loves) that is always crowded during hazy Brooklyn summers.
Before you get to the kiddie section, there is a basketball court and a baseball diamond in a different section, both on blacktop, that Lucy loves to traverse on her way to the sprinkler, and I can see her already sizing up the "big kids" for when she is ready to play with them.
One hot day in August, Lucy insisted on going under the sprinkler, gesturing wildly at it while imploring me "Dush! Dush!" (her word for "water" of all kinds), as I held her in one arm, pushing her stroller through the wrought iron gate with the other. So I changed her into her bathing suit, shod her with her pink crocs, and off she went.
Sprinkler-time is highly ritualistic or stylized, like those linguistic bee-dances. She first runs up to the sprinkler and puts one hand in front of the stream while leaning on the stone water source with the other. Then she runs back at me and throws what water she has grabbed all over my shirt and laughing runs away. Eventually she musters the courage to run straight through to the other side, where jets of water come from the facing pylons. Her courage stoked, she then runs in screaming circles through the gauntlet of jetstreams, dodging the other orbiting kids all the while. I don't know wht there aren't more kid-collisions in this toddler accelerator, especially during these peak summer hours.
This particular day, after having done her rounds, Lucy took interest in a puddle on the circumference of the sprinkler area. She splashed carefully in the water as she looked down at her pink feet. She loves to splash in puddles and sometimes does this little dance where she cocks her head up in the air and stomps her right foot emphatically while dragging her left. It's very atavistic (in a good way). Soon there were two other little girls, about Lucy's height (I've given up judging ages) and they too took to splashing in the curved narrow puddle. They were all aware of one another -- there was no competition for the splashiest part of the puddle or anything -- but they mostly kept to themselves as they splashed, sometimes looking up at their respective parent.
Suddenly one of the girls reached down to pick something up from the puddle, and the water that had just seemed so pure for the stomping suddenly seemed filthy now that it was reached into. The mother lurched. At the same moment, the other girl started to splash more emphatically, just as Lucy started to wander off. So we both reacted too. At once there was a chorus of parental shouting, all of us calling to our own: "Lulu!" "Lucy!" "Lucia!"
We all looked at one another; the three girls looked up at the parents not their own, then back to their own mommy or daddy. After a moment, it hit us. We had all named our daughters Lucia!
But rather than this being a moment of bonding or light, it turned things suddenly awkward. We all began to explain, to justify: "Yes," said one father, "We call her Lulu. She's named after her grandmother." "Strange, I've never met another Lucy," said the mother,"I thought it was unique." "She calls herself "Cia," I said dumbly.
Carroll Gardens Park is a place where children and parents come together and is most full as the day ends, and in it we find not just recreation but the beginnings of the social dynamics that shape all our lives so inexorably, like some ominous starsign. I guess that's why (we tell ourselves) we take Lucy there, why we see daycare itself as important, so that our Lucy can interact with others, so that she she can begin to be socialized, though I wish it would be with people who find coincidence to be a mark of revelation rather than a sign of having been out-thought.
As we strolled home after I dried Lucy off from her ablutions, we saw coming out of their brownstone not three doors down from ours, a fourth Lucia -- one also Lucy's age and one we knew already -- and her parents. This Lucia was born on the very same day as our Lucy, only a year earlier. The family was going out to the Hamptons for the weekend, seemingly glad to escape the hazy heat of Brooklyn. The girls smiled at one another, and I chatted amiably with the parents, who when we met them several months ago were as surprised and delighted as we were in the coincidence of naming, under similar stars.
Before you get to the kiddie section, there is a basketball court and a baseball diamond in a different section, both on blacktop, that Lucy loves to traverse on her way to the sprinkler, and I can see her already sizing up the "big kids" for when she is ready to play with them.
One hot day in August, Lucy insisted on going under the sprinkler, gesturing wildly at it while imploring me "Dush! Dush!" (her word for "water" of all kinds), as I held her in one arm, pushing her stroller through the wrought iron gate with the other. So I changed her into her bathing suit, shod her with her pink crocs, and off she went.
Sprinkler-time is highly ritualistic or stylized, like those linguistic bee-dances. She first runs up to the sprinkler and puts one hand in front of the stream while leaning on the stone water source with the other. Then she runs back at me and throws what water she has grabbed all over my shirt and laughing runs away. Eventually she musters the courage to run straight through to the other side, where jets of water come from the facing pylons. Her courage stoked, she then runs in screaming circles through the gauntlet of jetstreams, dodging the other orbiting kids all the while. I don't know wht there aren't more kid-collisions in this toddler accelerator, especially during these peak summer hours.
This particular day, after having done her rounds, Lucy took interest in a puddle on the circumference of the sprinkler area. She splashed carefully in the water as she looked down at her pink feet. She loves to splash in puddles and sometimes does this little dance where she cocks her head up in the air and stomps her right foot emphatically while dragging her left. It's very atavistic (in a good way). Soon there were two other little girls, about Lucy's height (I've given up judging ages) and they too took to splashing in the curved narrow puddle. They were all aware of one another -- there was no competition for the splashiest part of the puddle or anything -- but they mostly kept to themselves as they splashed, sometimes looking up at their respective parent.
Suddenly one of the girls reached down to pick something up from the puddle, and the water that had just seemed so pure for the stomping suddenly seemed filthy now that it was reached into. The mother lurched. At the same moment, the other girl started to splash more emphatically, just as Lucy started to wander off. So we both reacted too. At once there was a chorus of parental shouting, all of us calling to our own: "Lulu!" "Lucy!" "Lucia!"
We all looked at one another; the three girls looked up at the parents not their own, then back to their own mommy or daddy. After a moment, it hit us. We had all named our daughters Lucia!
But rather than this being a moment of bonding or light, it turned things suddenly awkward. We all began to explain, to justify: "Yes," said one father, "We call her Lulu. She's named after her grandmother." "Strange, I've never met another Lucy," said the mother,"I thought it was unique." "She calls herself "Cia," I said dumbly.
Carroll Gardens Park is a place where children and parents come together and is most full as the day ends, and in it we find not just recreation but the beginnings of the social dynamics that shape all our lives so inexorably, like some ominous starsign. I guess that's why (we tell ourselves) we take Lucy there, why we see daycare itself as important, so that our Lucy can interact with others, so that she she can begin to be socialized, though I wish it would be with people who find coincidence to be a mark of revelation rather than a sign of having been out-thought.
As we strolled home after I dried Lucy off from her ablutions, we saw coming out of their brownstone not three doors down from ours, a fourth Lucia -- one also Lucy's age and one we knew already -- and her parents. This Lucia was born on the very same day as our Lucy, only a year earlier. The family was going out to the Hamptons for the weekend, seemingly glad to escape the hazy heat of Brooklyn. The girls smiled at one another, and I chatted amiably with the parents, who when we met them several months ago were as surprised and delighted as we were in the coincidence of naming, under similar stars.
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