There is something about a park bench, not the eying little girls with bad intent kind of something, but something wistful.  Seems no matter where I am if my camera is with me there inevitably will be a picture of a park bench among the images. Because, yes, I am that crazy “chair loving” woman and a bench is simply a larger version of a chair. But that aside it’s the more public experience that draws me closer, I can better explain that attraction.

I had the pleasure of enjoying a lovely lunch with friends on a park bench yesterday at the NY Botanical Gardens. Lunches brought from home that become warmed by their confinement in a day pack just taste better. The sun was shining yet it was still nice and cool, the people watching wasn’t too distracting and all the better because the view was breathtaking. As Lincoln once said, every blade of grass is a study.

I was reminded of the custom of carving one’s initials in a park bench to cement the moment in time. This image from a bench tucked away along the side of a lake.

I was further reminded of a place I once ran to for some much needed solace that was neither too far nor too close to my home. It was a tiny sanctuary in the middle of my town, around a bend. But even in its smallness the pond and the wildlife it attracted calmed my otherwise chaotic life for a few hours.

Sharing a bench with someone has led to many a discussion of things both worldly and mundane, of good books and the beauty that often surrounds a well-placed park bench.

Several years ago it became a custom to dedicate park benches to local parks in someone’s honor. In their name many wonderful and heartfelt inscriptions have been etched on benches. And while those are wonderful I tend to look for the more…truthful…humorous…stop you in your tracks dedications that make you laugh out loud and entice you to sit where this person sat.

If you need a break in your fast paced, stressful, hair pulling day, find a park bench, grab a hot dog and start the day again. It’s worked for me.