my very own park

Gage Park, in the heart of our city! Close by my favourite childhood home (there were a few) and a place I hold close... I feel a familiarity whenever I go there, it knows me! It is my park. Others use it, people even come to visit it each summer for its annual festivals, some others may claim it even belongs to the city but in my heart I believe it to be mine. I share it with my brothers and my sisters. It is their park too, but I do not know if they have ever really thought of it in that way. (maybe Krystal if any of them)
I have shown the park to my children and tell them I will even share it with them. We go there each summer and have checked out all its secret spots and special trees. Some has changed there but so much is exactly the same. I doubt they know the depths of its meaning to me, or will ever love it like I do, and that is okay!
Gage Park, it was where we would spend so much of our time. Our vivid imaginations and its lush greenery allowed for many fantasies to be cooked up. We were so alive on its grounds... all of it. It is a big park, the play area, or the fountain, and of course, the Children's Museum were always abuzz. But we found what lay beneath. The small creek at the back, the tree forts surrounding the fountain, the trees which we thought could talk like those in the Wizard of Oz. The gazebo like structure was our castle and the flowers in the gardens were picked a few times more than they should have been. We'd walked the gravel pathways or I would imagine myself in a race and ride my ten speed full tilt around the whole park. I can even remember accompanying my Dad on a couple of jogs there, when he was in a short lived stint of fitness. We played at the Supie's but would soon be taken in by the park's magic and away into its core we would go. How fun to splash in the pools of water coming down from the fountain (unsanitary, yuck) or to see just how high we could climb in the trees. We could spend a day of it. And we did so many times.
I remember riding my bike over to the back field just to catch the junior football players practice, a nonchalant coincidence, of course! My school crush would call me over and the little tease I was, I would just keep riding by. And there were a group of guys (much older) who we had sat down to watch playing football one day who convinced me and my sister that they were the Hamilton Tigercats. We actually ran home to make them kool-aid! Scoping the grounds for lost change was a regular ritual after a festival would end. We'd find some too! The old snack bar with the washrooms still stands but it is boarded up these days. The bandshell was a grand stage and what a performer I was... cartwheels and song and dance routine. Though we would take turns watching from the seats and performing, what I recall most was the performing. That was me. I had little brothers and sisters to be my fans.
We ran away there, stayed all day there, and sure did play there. I love my park.