A Walk in the Park
I think all of us have a conflicted relationship with the place where we grew up, and coming home, or even identifying a place you used to be as home can sometimes be a tricky business. When I was a young lass, my family settled in Havre de Grace, Maryland, and like most homes, it is full of mixed memories. Mostly, I felt like a ghost in this town, haunting the streets at odd hours of the night, never fitting in during the day. Now there are even more ghosts here because this is and forever will be the place where my mother died. All of that aside, there are a few places here which still resonate with happiness, and I like to share them with the children.
One of my favorite places to visit is the park in Havre de Grace. Although I never played on this playground as a child, it is where I used to come whenever I visited my mother in the nursing home. It butts up against the place where the Susquehanna meets the Chesapeake Bay, and the marina and boardwalk are stunning. Both Lady Chatterly and Sir Talks A Lot, each in their own time, have loved this playground. One of the things I love best about the park is that each of the trees in the park is different, and there are labels on them explaining what kind of tree each one is. Unfortunately, the camera died shortly after we arrived, so this is just the start of our afternoon in the park.
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