MINOT, N.D.

There’s a play set in my backyard.

It’s been there through many winters and summers now, since my oldest child was a little girl. It’s been weathered by blizzards and summer heat waves. Around it are worn patches in the grass, where little feet have tramped and skidded away the grass.

It’s my job to mow around this thing, and I’ll admit it hasn’t always been my favorite chore. It’s a bit of a pain negotiating the mower around it, and it breaks up the long, straight mow lines I prefer.

But the payoff is the sound of bright peels of laughter as my kids and their buddies from the neighborhood climb and slide and swing.

Things are different this year. The patches of dirt under the monkey bars and at the end of the slide have grown over with grass.

My oldest daughter, who once turned the crow’s nest into a beauty parlor, who begged to sleep outside in it, now sleeps in her own apartment with her husband.

My middle daughter just graduated from high school and is working a summer job on her way into her freshman year in college. She still likes to swing while listening to music and singing, but her days of sliding and climbing are mostly behind her.

It won’t be long until she has her own place to live. “Time moves slowly, but passes quickly,” as Alice Walker wrote.

My son will be 11 next month and is still young enough to play on the play set with his friends, but he’s been gone all summer on an extended road trip with his poppa.

And so the grass has grown where their feet would have stomped. Dad mows it, faithfully, keeping things trimmed for when the backyard will be full of running and tumbling kids again, but they’re growing up, too. Soon the play set will hold little appeal for them.

It’s hard to fight off a maudlin feeling. That something wonderful and important — a golden era of life — is coming to a close.

I know that one day there may be grandchildren, and they’ll come and visit their grandpa, and I hope they’ll climb and jump and swing where their parents once did. I will love that, but it won’t be the same.

It’s strange what you learn while you age. You toil and strive to build a career, and prosperity, and a safety net to protect your family and yourself. You indulge yourself in some nice things along the way. A new car. A new phone. Some nice vacations.

But then your realize that one of the most valuable things you own is an old wooden play set in the backyard. Steps and handles worn by hundreds of little hands and feet. A structure that has been a pirate ship, a space cruiser, an outlaw’s hideout and the corporate headquarters of an imagined lemonade stand empire.

I will always cherish this play set and the scars it carries.