By : Ya'el McLoud
April 13, 2022
On a brisk night in October of 2017, I walked in the Benson Park Sculpture Garden in Loveland, Colo. with a boy I was just getting to know. We walked amongst giants, alligators, the happiest dancing fat woman anyone has ever seen, sly foxes amongst the ferns, and children swinging between vines and steel pythons. Numbness overtook our fingers, toes, and noses because of the cold, but we did not notice it as we talked about everything. We circled the park laughing and realizing how much we enjoyed each other and how the conversation flowed.
Picture by: Ya'el McLoud
A map of our relationship would reveal world travels, college, cross-country road trips, backpacking trips, and many visits home, but it would always begin in the sculpture garden, where we realized that we had found love at an unexpectedly early age. We were 16 when we met and both had our gazes fixed on the future and adventure in our spirits. The sculpture garden where we began to fall in love would turn out to be the perfect metaphor for our relationship. Childlike wonder would be a beacon, but our relationship like the environment of the sculpture would change with the seasons, similar to the sculptures themselves our relationship would stand firm through time.
As we turn a corner we are faced with “Unsteady Steadiness” two bronze children balancing on one bike, they look as if they are teeter-tottering, one boy behind the other, child-like joy lights up the face of the boy in the back while the other young boys face is screwed in concentration. I flashback to when just like the two boys Ben and I balanced as we rode his bike back to his dorm and around campus. His face screwed in concentration as I shrieked in panicked laughter as I tried my best to balance myself but not unbalance him. That has been our relationship, both of us trying to balance ourselves against each other, the unsteady steadiness of our young love.
We turn another corner in the garden and we are faced with a rotund woman who is dancing naked. Joy lights up her face in a grin that makes her cheeks appear round like a cherub. Her eyes are closed savoring this frozen moment. Our memories like the statues in the garden are all around us. My mind catches on my memories of Kauai, Hawaii, or Costa Rica where Ben and I would hold each other in the sunshine on the beaches and close our eyes to savor that moment, pure, carefree, and simple joy like that expressed by the dancing woman.
Hidden further off the path near to the ferns of the pond is a coyote, hackles up and struck with shock and wariness. I would not know it when I first saw it, but the coyote’s features would somewhat resemble my own when Ben first told me he loved me. Frozen with shock and wariness I froze. I was the first person he had ever said this to in a romantic manner. It was the first time I had heard that phrase and fully believed it, and when I responded two full weeks later, I was no longer shocked or wary but had resumed feeling like the metal the coyote was made of as I was assured this was something permanent and, in some ways, timeless.
We walked through the garden again five years later, we were 21 and 20 respectively. We had grown and changed there were now new sculptures in the garden, an older woman sitting in a wide-brimmed hat, she held gardening sheers in her hand. The bronze she was cast in fixed her silent grin and aged wrinkles in place. The sculpture new but firmly planted and fixed in time showed us both how much had changed and how our relationship still stood calm and content.
Sculptures like all art can be interpreted in unique ways. Because of this, every sculpture garden is worth visiting. But the Benson Sculpture Garden in Loveland, Colo. will always be the place where I fell in love with my partner. Its sculptures to me will always reflect our love and many adventures and hopefully the dichotomy of how our relationship will remain steady and yet evolve. Just like the white sculpture of two people clasped and molded together forever which is aptly titled “Loving the Moment” I hope my relationship continues to love the moments big and small.
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