The Swing Seat at Waverly Park. Loretta Jean had never liked the word… | by Chelsea Judge | Bless Her Heart & Mine Too | Sep, 2025

Loretta Jean had never liked the word “divorced.” It sounded like a stain that wouldn’t wash out, the kind of label folks whisper about when they see you coming down the church steps.

Every Saturday morning after the papers were signed, she started showing up at Waverly Park. Not to walk, not to jog like the younger ones. No, Loretta came for the swing seat tucked under the big magnolia tree — the one that creaked like it had secrets. That old swing didn’t judge. It didn’t ask her why she stayed so long or left so late. It just held her, creaking gently, like a friend.

She’d pack a small tote bag: a bottle of lemonade, a hand fan, and sometimes a book she never actually read. Mostly, she watched the ducks fuss at each other in the pond, listened to the wind moving through the trees, and tried not to cry. Some Saturdays she did anyway.

Then one morning, he showed up.

Not in a loud or flashy way. He didn’t come jogging or blaring music like the teenagers. Just a man with a worn straw hat, a limp, and a folding chair he popped open not ten feet from her swing. She glanced at him, then looked away. He smiled, nodded, but said nothing.

He came back the next Saturday. And the next. Each time, he’d tip his hat, sit in his chair, and read a newspaper like it was 1985.

“Morning,” he finally said one day.

Loretta blinked. “Morning.”

That was it.

Next week: “You ever try the boiled peanuts from that man in the red truck?”
She hadn’t.
He brought her a bag the following Saturday.

And so it went. One bag of peanuts. One awkward joke. One shared story. His name was Otis Carr. Widowed. Used to work at the post office. Said he liked “the peace” at Waverly. Loretta didn’t ask for more than that.

But one day he said, “You swing like somebody who’s lost somethin’. Or maybe waitin’ on somethin’.”

She paused mid-swing. “Maybe both.”

Otis nodded like he understood.

A few more weeks passed. She told him about the dog she used to have, the daughter who moved up north and only called on holidays, the husband who said he “needed something new.” She hadn’t meant to tell him all that, but it slipped out.

He listened like he’d been waiting his whole life to hear it.

By mid-September, the park had started to change. Leaves rustled louder. The breeze bit a little more. Loretta showed up in a cardigan. Otis brought two thermoses — coffee in one, hot cider in the other.

“You ever think about dancing again?” he asked her.

“Dancing?” she laughed. “I ain’t danced in years.”

He shrugged. “Me neither. But it’s never too late to learn how again. Might even be fun.”

Loretta looked down at her hands. Then she looked at Otis — sitting there in his folding chair like some quiet piece of her past she forgot she missed.

Maybe he was right.

That swing had carried her through the summer. But maybe, just maybe, the fall could teach her how to let go.