Once Upon a Ladybug Swing

[Editor's Note: I wasn't compensated at all for this post. I only linked to the swings so you could visualize, as we all know I suck at photography.]

The tree must have already been a hundred years old by the time I met it and its black tractor tire swing hanging from a long yellow rope. It wasn't the sort of tire swing I see hanging on suburban playground sets, laid out horizontally with three ropes meeting in the center. This tire was hollowed out with handles cut in the sides, so you could sit deep inside it like an astronaut in a rocket booster and hang on for dear life.

I remember my father and uncles taking turns pushing us so high my toes seemed to crest the roof line of my cousin's house. We'd beg them to keep going long after we could tell they were regretting ever hanging that rope. In my imagination, the swing got higher off the ground every year as the tree grew, taking the swing with it inch by inch.

I loved that swing.

Last Christmas, Beloved bought me a canvas sky swing, the kind made out of canvas and wood that you see at home shows and think, "Man, I really need one of those," but you never buy it because it's totally frivolous. (I love gifts like that.) We hung it this summer from one of the forty-year-old trees outside our house, but I could never get a turn because my daughter and her friends were always in it, and it's not a swing meant for kids. It's a swing meant for long novels and a stepladder end-table to hold my glass of wine. So I bought the ladybug swing.

The rope wasn't long enough, so my husband and the neighbor got more and spent two hours getting the rope over one of the top boughs. My daughter, fearless as always, taught herself to run and jump onto it that afternoon, though she begs -- just as I did -- for the sort of above-the-head, underdog push only an adult can give, the kind that sends the swing twisting and jittering ten feet in the air as the child begins a methodical pendulum ride that's as pleasing to watch as it is to ride. Back and forth. Back and forth. 

I had to buy a timer because the neighbor kids all fought over the swing, ignoring hot tubs and motorized kid cars and wooden swingsets and park slides for the $23 ladybug swing, which has become so popular we unclip its little green string from the long white rope at night. It's a treat, something brought out only when there is time to sit back and inhale the scent rolling off the tomato plants and listen to the morning doves argue over safflower seed.

The swing is really a time machine, and it lands a few times a week in my cousin's yard in Iowa.