The Memory Ring

The amount of time that the trampoline was up….7 years.
The amount of money I got from the scrap metal yard….$26.00
The amount of memories garnered from having a trampoline…Priceless!

I looked out the kitchen window at the round bouncy playground, trying to avoid its awkward mass for the umpteenth time. The barely hanging safety net, the beginning to rust springs and the mildewed black dirty jumping mat had taken up a space between our back porch and tool shed for the last seven years, and it was time to come down.

I approached the thing with a gladiator’s heart, ready to conquer it and get it out of the way, but as I started to loosen each of it’s rusting springs, a sadness came over me. I realized that I was intentionally taking apart an object that my girls, and many of their friends, had grown up spending many a giggling hours bonding with. This ole bouncy thing...had become a part of our lives.

I began with the first spring and then the one next to it and the next and the next. There was no significant change in the old taught canvas as it held tight and fought me at first on each spring I loosed, but soon, like an old man having to give into the strength of robbers breaking something precious from his hands, the old canvas began to loosen with each rusty spring that I removed from it’s hold. Wait, I thought I heard a noise. I worked even faster, hating what I was doing.

Too soon, the old mildewed canvas lay limp on top of the tall un-cut grass and weeds below it. I took my hammer and started beating apart the metal frame and soon, it too, was in pieces lying around the yard all around my feet like fallen warriors, remnants or some sweeter times. As I took their friend apart, voices haunted the metal and I could hear the girls, “Awe, daddy…what are you doing? How will we jump and play any more? Fix it daddy…please fix it.” I tried to work quicker hoping that finishing the treachery would make the end easier. I was wrong. There were more voices.

By now, it was no longer a magical trampoline, but a bunch of parts strewn around the yard, a nuisance that must now be picked up and hauled away. I gathered the clanging metal into the rear of my truck bed. The springs went into a bucket and into the back of the truck. I thought, “I wonder how much I can get for this scrap metal?” “Awe daddy,” I thought I heard. I rolled up the limp matt and tied a string around it to use it some other day…another way, and I decided to finish the task by cutting the tall overgrown grass and weeds. This became the toughest part…a part I never would have imagined to affect me the way it did.

I cranked the riding lawn mower, engaged the blade, dropped it to the proper height and made my first pass over my extra tall opponents. I ran over the whole area several times in many different directions because the mower would push the tall stuff in one direction and leave uncut clumps in it’s cutting trail. Around and around, back and forth, this way and that and finally…just as I had set out to do…I had finished the task…and taken the ole thing down. But, I was not to have the final word…the ole bouncy thing did. He had been there a long time and had left a perfect round ring…a Memory Ring.

I sat on my mower for a while and studied the ring…the Memory Ring. I knew that it symbolized much in our lives. The ring showed evidence of something that had been, but was no more. Chances are, this same ring will never appear in this same spot, but it was here for now, as a reminder of sweeter, innocent, growing up, laughing, bouncing, snacks, camp outs, rainy fun, sunny fun, Summer night fun and Winter fun, quiet talks, innocent dreams, childish mischief and growing older. The ring was there.

The Memory ring will be gone in a few months. With just enough water and sunlight, new grass will grow and before long the spot where this memory ring is will be gone and forgotten. It is the way it is…because we will come and we will go.

Psalm 103
3 As a father has compassion on his children,
so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him;
14 for he knows how we are formed,
he remembers that we are dust.
15 As for man, his days are like grass,
he flourishes like a flower of the field;
16 the wind blows over it and it is gone,
and its place remembers it no more.

In Memory of our Memory Ring,
Wick Jackson