The Pity of it All...

The news spread like a tenement fire. The new playground equipment in the PS 29 schoolyard had been set alight sometime after midnight on Mother's Day. There were 20-foot flames at close to one in the morning, someone said. The curly slide was melted. The plastic rock wall has just gone. Nothing left but soot. We examined pictures. My four-year-old howled like she'd lost a loved one. "My beautiful play yard is ruined," she moaned.

My second grader was confounded. She wanted answers. "Who did it?" she insisted. "Who would do that?" she begged.

We made our way to the fence on Kane Street to examine the damage. My heart sank.

The schoolyard had been on the agenda for years, delayed by budget cuts and a bidding process designed, it seemed, to create an atmosphere of relentless uncertainty. That the project went ahead was a sort of validation that one day things would return to normal, or at least get better.

Since at least 2007, the families of PS 29 banded together to face one loss after another, some of them devastating. And every year was met with a new challenge. A student died in a horrible accident. Our beloved school cook, Richard, died without warning. John, another long time, much loved fixture at PS 29 similarly passed away. Plans to renovate the auditorium were shelved. The PTA assumed expenses that would customarily be covered by the school's budget.  A midyear budget cut last year had families scrambling to make up the shortfall by donating reams and reams of paper. Lisa Trollbäck, the former PTA president and a woman of extraordinary resourcefulness, leveraged connections to get a conference table and other furniture donated to the school because we simply didn't have it in the budget to do otherwise.

At least we got the new school yard--the benches, the trees, the chess tables, the garden and the beautiful playground equipment. To see it suddenly go up in smoke left me speechless and feeling, I admit, defeated.

Rumors, too, spread like the aforementioned tenement fire. 20 foot flames! Teenagers did it! No, not just teenagers, but rather teenage girls! Not just any teenage girls--2 teenage girls (I admit my source was an eight year old, but it's more than the fire department has said so far).

Melanie and Jeffrey, the principal and the new AP, went from class to class to assure children that the play yard would be replaced. A letter came home with the good news. Within two months, it should be good as new.

But my second grader, having picked up on the rumor that the vandalism was the work of two teenage girls, wanted answers. Why? she insisted. Why? She's at an age when she's both fascinated and terrified by teenagers. So am I, maybe.

Teenagers don't understand consequences for themselves, I told her. It's one of the things that sets them apart from adults. They probably didn't realize what they were doing. Fires are hard to control. Besides, we don't know who did it, or why, I told her. And what's important is that Melanie is going to fix it.

But school will be over by the time the playground is fixed, she cried. But you can start the school year with the new equipment, I countered. She wrinkled her nose, a gesture that pushed her glasses into her eyebrows. Third graders don't play on the equipment, she said. Alas.

On Monday, my girls came home from school black with soot. The ash had blown all over the schoolyard. Their shoes were black. We threw their clothes in the laundry and I put them in the shower before dinner.

Tuesday was better. Pre-K went to the Prospect Park Zoo. Maybe Monday's late wind carried the rest of the soot away. The girls didn't look like chimney sweeps when they got home, anyway. My second grader asked again if they caught the teenagers. We looked at neighborhood blogs and learned very little. See, I told her. No mention of teenage girls. The fire department will figure it out.

I complained about the soot. If it gets all over your clothes, you're breathing it in, too, I said. If you can stay inside for recess, it might be a good idea for the rest of the week. Ugh, Mom. She shrugged and shook her head at the idea. We spent half the school year inside, she reminded me.

And then she brightened. Maybe if the schoolyard is too sooty they'll block Kane Street at lunch time again and we can play in the street!

What an idea. Only in Brooklyn...