I’m writing this on a park bench in downtown Vancouver, surrounded by people and feeling completely anonymous.
It’s mid-July. We came into the city to visit family and catch a game. I’d been staring at large screens at a busy brewpub in a quickly-gentrifying downtown neighbourhood and am overwhelmed by all of this… civilization.
I stepped outside and, by nature, began following the sun down city streets until I found a copse of trees. A public park – ball diamond in one corner, splash pad in the other – with a tiny cafe across the street. There had been a man with a guitar outside the cafe but he was packing up by the time I came out, a cup in one hand and a (gasp) physical copy of the weekend newspaper in the other.
I settled onto the bench and faded into the background of my surroundings.
The park itself was remarkable inasmuch as it appeared both idyllic and commonplace. The tree-lined block was teeming. Some families picnicked in the outfield grass, another group barbecued at a picnic table nearby. Children were playing soccer, the teams ever-shifting as new kids joined and others wandered off.
“There must be three birthday parties,” a boy, about eight, exclaimed as he and his mother arrived on the scene. “No, four! How are we going to find the right one?” He ran off to join the game, leaving her to search for familiar faces in those gathered under the shade of a nearby tree.
The scene reminded me of my first summer on Pender Island, unknown and unknowingly standing in the midst of a similarly idyllic-yet-commonplace scene. Gathering neighbours who had known each other for decades, families whose children had grown up making marvelous mischief together. Friends who together had survived bad times and built better memories.
A moment like this could happen anywhere. At any park or playground. On any beach or along any trail. At the Hall or the Driftwood, of course. Also outside Southridge, down at Hope Bay, over on Gowlland Point or at the Magic Lake swimming dock.
So as I sit here on this downtown bench, an audience to this joyfully communal experience, I wonder if these people know how lucky they are to have a place like this park. And how blessed they are to share it with the people they do.