I received a brochure from the Higgins School of Humanities at Clark University. Dialogue Symposium Spring 2015: The Work of Play. (A series of lectures, concerts, exhibitions, events.)

From the brochure: “This semester, our dialogue symposium asks where and on what terms play thrives in our achievement and results-oriented society. We will consider free play and games, cooperation and competition, sports and technology. How does play provide space for fantasy, diversion, and escape? When does it challenge the status quo and when does it re-inscribe existing hierarchies? Whether we view play as a biological imperative, a site of community, a civil right, a way to discover beauty, or a passport to cross national boundaries, there can be little doubt that the work of play is serious business.”

From Amy Richter, the Director of the Higgins School of Humanities: “Americans seem to be playing less and less, as increases in leisure time are offset by new technologies that keep us tethered to work. Equally troubling, our culture’s insistent drive for results has placed outcome over process, completion over exploration, winning over learning or enjoying the game. Still we know play matters…So let’s play.”

The brochure, which I was excited to receive, outlines an impressive schedule of experts, professionals, and scholars engaging in various forms of dialogue about how “play inspires creativity, builds communities, reveals and challenges boundaries”, and how play is an “effective practice, and, as such, may offer new insights into larger concerns.” (Intellectual, social, and emotional development.)

I browsed through the brochure, read descriptions of lectures and events, and made note of the presenters. I read the most prominently featured quotations–regarding play–by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Johan Huizinga, Vladimir Nabokov, Sol LeWitt, and G. Stanley Hall (who was the first president of Clark University).

And then I started grumbling. A symposium about play, without any presenters who are children? The kinds of children who are nothing but children? Nor any presenters who are mothers and fathers? The kinds of mothers and fathers who are nothing but mothers and fathers?

And no prominently featured quotes by women? The kinds of women who have led the charge to just play since the first baby was born?

We all started out as babies. 

The heart beats. The lungs fill up. Hunger. Sleep. Cuddle. Play.

*****

I learned about play by being a kid, and I revisited those wonderlands and fighting rings when I had my own children. Some people are afraid to do this.

Try it.

Hand a baby to someone.

If the person freezes and says: “What am I supposed to do?”

Answer: “Play.”

If the person says, “What? How? Why?”

You could engage in a dialogue. What is play, how do you do it, and why do you have to do it? And what if you do it wrong?

You could consult books about play–written by experts–with hypothetical groupings by age, accompanied with suggested age-appropriate activities, age-defined expectations, life-long benefits.

You could also consult a quote by Nabokov about how everything good in life is play, and how what the baby might be feeling is the same essence of play that possesses someone like a juggler, who tosses from hand to hand in an unbroken sparkling parabola…the planets of the universe.

You could consult the Internet: “How to play with a baby.”

You could watch an instructional video.

But by the time you do any one of the above suggestions, the baby is reaching through the air with an unwieldy arm and has clutched someone’s nose. Cute little finger-nailed claws, (that need a good trim), dig in. Land lobster! The baby head butts Nose Person, opens his or her little rosebud mouth–wide–and slimes that strange object, a nose. The baby spits up.

Keep playing, like this:

The baby wants to hear, over and over and over and over and over again: words that rhyme, to the rhythm of pages that turn, to the shine of pictures that glow. The baby wants to play Bouncy Horse on a knee or fly through the air atop hands stretched to their limit. The baby wants to play Let’s Make Funny Noises. The baby wants to play Let’s Eat Every Toy and Try a Few Bugs, Too. The baby wants to play Let’s Unfold all the Laundry. And Unroll all the Toilet Paper. The baby wants to play Let’s Pour Whatever is in the Sippy Cup into the Potty. And follow that up with Let’s Try to Scoop It All Back Out of the Potty. The baby wants to play Let’s Rewire the House. The baby wants to play Let’s Stay Up All Night. The baby wants to play Let’s Fill Up the Bathtub and See What Floats in There. When you turn your back, the baby dumps the unrolled pile of toilet paper into the bathtub. The baby wants to play with food. The baby wants to play with glitter and glue and Let’s Run with Tomahawks. The baby wants to play with lipstick and high heels and toothpaste, combed through hair and squeezed into ears. The baby wants to play I Can Do It Myself! (Chop wood, mow the lawn, run the snowblower, drive the car.) The baby wants to play No! No! No! and Now! Now! Now!

The baby LOVES to play Why? Why? Why?

Do we study play, because we aren’t sure how worthwhile it is? And if the experts determine play is worthwhile, are we trying to establish standards for how much of it we should have and after we do that, do we begin to create the need to acquire play in dosages? We have already done this. We have commodified play. Vacation resorts make sure to sell a full schedule of scheduled play activities for children. (You go on vacation, and buy play. “But we work. We don’t have time to play.” Yet not even when we go on vacation with our children, do we have time to play with them.) Schools hire playground experts to coach children on how to play on the playground.

Children don’t even get to choose what they want to play anymore.

Pharmaceutical corporations are designing Play Pills. The ones shaped like baseballs, make you play baseball so much, you become a superstar. The ones shaped like footballs, same. The ones shaped like hockey pucks, same. The ones shaped like guitar picks make you play the guitar so much, you become a rockstar. The ones shaped like ivy leaves make you wear Brooks Brothers and Vineyard Vines so much, you become a member of the Ivy League.

You can custom order Play Pills.

*****

When I sent my daughter to preschool, I searched for a place where she could play. I found Marilyn Dorey at Doe Rey Me–a preschool she ran from her home and gardens. I soon became an apprentice to Marilyn and worked with her on Wednesday mornings when I got to play in the kitchen with the children. I remember the first day I dropped my daughter off for school and she started to cry. Marilyn said, “Stay here and play until she stops crying.” I was so relieved. So was my daughter.

Marilyn had a quote, hanging in her school:

I tried to teach my child with books. He gave me only puzzled looks.

I tried to teacher my child with words. They passed him by often unheard.

Despairingly, I turned aside. “How shall I teach this child?” I cried.

Into my hand he put the key.

“Come,” he said, “play with me.”

******

The work of play is the work of being in love and having fun. Enjoying life.

If you put it all together, it’s the work most children, mothers and fathers do 24/7.

LOVE, PLAY, LIVE.

For some, it comes naturally–though most of us, at some point in our lives, consult the books and the experts. But then we discover that the experts never studied kids like ours. And we become specialized experts–in charge of our own little free spirits.

Many of us, more importantly, are beginning to wonder about where?  Where does anyone go to find the freedom to just play without everything being arranged, categorized, scheduled, controlled, and judged?

Where do we go to be free?

When freedom is taken away, little by little, and memories of just playing are removed from the gene pool, it will be a challenge to get it back. Even if you study play, and encourage grown ups to honor it and engage in it and try it out, if there is no memory of genuine childhood play, there is no trigger to the heart.

The art of play–like the art of love–comes from deep inside the heart.

And when we are born,

the heart–our own special, once-in-a-lifetime heart–

Is already beating

And it has a sound all its own.

******

Playing in the gypsy camps.