Mundy Park—a little ballpark in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee. The park right behind my childhood house. The place I complained about walking just one loop with my family. The place where I first walked my childhood dog. The place I learned to ride a bike. The place with the hill everyone sledded down in winter. The park with the parking lot where I learned to drive. The place where I ran my first full-out mile.
It’s the only place I make sure to visit every time I’m home. I drive out there at night—the park is basically closed. I park in the same spot and walk up the paved hill to the playground at the top. I climb the stairs to the red slide and look over the entire park: the football field (now a pickleball court), the baseball field. I sit down and make sure I go as fast as I can down the slide. Then I walk over to the giant yellow M-shaped climbing structure and climb up and down both curves. If you look back at my childhood photos, you’ll find me and my siblings forced to take an annual photo here, over several years.
Lastly, I make my way to the swings. Oh, how I love the swings. Such a simple part of a playground, yet they make me feel like I can fly. I’ve never found a swingset that could solve all my problems, but these come close. Back and forth, higher and higher—the wind in my face, worries fading. The swings remind me what it’s like to be a kid: worry-free, with only one problem to solve—how to get higher, high enough to touch the sky.
This park connects my adult life to my childhood. I don’t have a childhood home to return to, and the memories I do have are here. The good ones, the ones that shaped me, all happened at this park. It brings immense joy, but also pain. The mix of both, in a strange way, brings me peace.
It’s one of the few places on this earth where I can truly feel something. The place that’s seen decades’ worth of different version of me, which reminds me that some feelings never have to change.