The Park My Mind Won't Remember

"Preston Park?" my husband suggests, leash in hand, dog waiting by the door.

And immediately, as always, I picture Hove Park in my mind's eye. The wide-open spaces, the gentle slopes, the safe familiarity of it.

"Why do I always do that?" I wonder aloud as we head out. "Every single time you say Preston Park, I see the other one."

He shrugs. "It's not like you suffered some trauma there or anything."

Oh, but I did.

The memory crashes back: The boy with the spike.

That first home education picnic, years ago now. We were new to it, tentatively dipping our toes into the local homeschooling community. I'd organised it—my first attempt at bringing families together. The sun was shining, parents were chatting and sharing wine, children were running free and wild as children should.

My boys were playing with a group of kids, climbing trees, being boisterous and joyful. And then—the fall. One of the lads playing with Charlie tumbled from a branch onto the park's wrought-iron railings below.

The spike went clean through him.

In under his ribs, out at his shoulder.

We held him there, impaled, talking to him softly while we waited for the ambulance. Don't move, sweetheart. Help is coming. You're going to be okay.

But inside, I was drowning in guilt. It was my son he'd been playing with. The picnic I'd organized. My great idea that had gone terribly wrong. The metallic smell of blood made me dizzy as we waited, my son’s small hand gripping mine.

I texted the boy’s mum late into the night. Checking on the surgery. Hoping he'd survived having the spike removed. Praying he'd be alright.

He was, thankfully. But something in my mind apparently decided that Preston Park was too dangerous to remember clearly. So whenever anyone mentions it, my brain offers up Hove Park instead—quieter, safer, trauma-free.

Some part of me, it seems, renamed it Trauma Park and filed it away where I wouldn't have to look at it directly.

The mind protects us in the strangest ways.

I never stopped believing children should run free and explore. Yet after that incident, when it came to my daughter, I never once let her play without my eyes on her.