Growing up, my family and I would take evening trips to the playground and  duck pond behind Timber Creek Elementary. Over the years, these places have lost their allure, but now I get to watch my brother experience them for the first time.

Exploring the playground used to fill me with joy. I’d look up at the monkey bars in awe at how high up they were, seeming unreachable. There was so much to do, so many things to climb. But the slides were my favorite. So fast I almost took flight 

But the slides aren’t as fast and the monkey bars don’t seem as tall anymore. They’ve lost their sense of childish wonder. 

Now my little brother soars down the same slides and traverses across the same monkey bars. He cheers as he runs up and down the playground, and he laughs as each creak of the swings takes him higher. It’s all new to him. 

What I see as average, he sees as shiny and exciting. I get a warm feeling from watching him explore this exciting new space just like I did all that time ago.  His wide eyes and cheeky grin bring me a feeling of joy and reminiscence.

Walking the trails and looking up at the trees, I remember how they towered over me when I was younger and how dark the forest felt. Entering the woods used to engulf me in a sense of curiosity and wonder. They’re not so mysterious anymore. . 

I no longer wonder where the sun would go when the trees covered the sky, and I no longer search the trees for mysterious hidden creatures and their suspicious sounds. 

My brother keeps close to me as we meander through the forest. He gazes at the trees as if they were going to move. He’d sit still if I weren’t ushering him to move forward. To see my brother mimic my old self almost makes me laugh.

Emerging from the trees, I look down at my reflection in the rippling pond water, and I see someone that looks so different from who I was 14 years ago. When I was younger, I didn’t spare a thought for the future. Nowadays that’s all I can think about. 

The ducks follow me and quack expectantly, peeping their heads up for bread. When I was a boy, my first few times visiting the pond, the ducks would run, flap and fly away from me as I wandered about. I was unfamiliar and obnoxious to them as an especially loud and giggly child. Now I get to watch my little brother follow the ducks and laugh as they waddle away. He tells me the ducks are silly because they walk weirdly. I remember how scary they were to me. Where my brother gets his confidence, I don’t know.

He is experiencing this world 14 years after me, but in many ways, despite the amount of time that has passed, it hasn’t changed at all. This park I explored, and that he is exploring now, is almost unchanged. It is interesting to see how the same place can affect two people differently 

As children, we saw the world as a wonderful place with so much to explore, but as we grow older we get used to the things that left us awestruck in the past. My little brother sees a world so full of color and getting to be with him as he experiences it restores some of the color I stopped seeing.