Everyone Needs a Treehouse

My first treehouse was located at the end of a acre of land in the lot next door to my childhood home. It provided an imaginary means of travelling to "far off lands" and for hiding out from parental authority. In this particular treehouse, which was pretty much a community possession of the ten or so kids that lived on the block, we planned raids as pirates and plays recreating the antics of Laurel and Hardy or the Three Stooges. We had picnics and "cooked" venison on open fires that wouldn't warm an ant's hide if it crawled over it. Mostly smoke, I recall...at least it LOOKED like a fire.
Here we made friends and laughed and fought and figured out new football strategies. (I was always the Center, I was not really a football fan...)We shared spit and blood in the days when you could do that. We broke each other's hearts and consoled each other when we were misunderstood.
We were never what I would call great friends, but were shared many hours together, perhaps just out of convenience. Patty was a sports nut. Ellen was the intellectual. Elaine was the ultimate competitor. Stacy liked dolls. I was the teacher...or Ma...or center in a tag football game. There were others, but I'll spare them the compact description. These people were witnesses and participants to the most innocent years of my life.
I never really thought too much about it until the week my mother died. It was on a Friday the 13th...tomorrow will be another Friday the 13th. That day is important for me. But I'll leave that for later musings.
My dad died about 10 years earlier. I was not really close to my parents. I always felt as if I didn't fit. Being an only child, though, I felt a great deal of obligation. Still, there was no one with whom to grieve. I didn't even know I needed to grieve until Patty walked through the receiving line. We made eye contact and somehow that connected all the dots for me. She was there for most of my life. She knew the soft spots. She saw the good and the bad. And in that second, I felt tremendous comfort. I felt greatly loved. Even if it was only for a second.
These people who mark out what we think are insignificant events in our lives and sometimes the most important people we know. We have not had the chance to overthink them. We don't expect from them. We don't anticipate from them. We don't try to (heaven forbid) manipulate them, We just take them as they are. They are precious gems in their own right, unrefined and unique. They open doors in our hearts that the significant ones don't even know exist.
I suppose that all comes down to this particular treehouse. This one built between four small oak trees huddling together for warmth. Strong enough to hold at least five kids and six Dr. Pepper cans...and a mayonaise jar of tadpoles recently caught in the ditch on the left.
Patty helped me to grieve my mom. Just by being there.
So when you get the chance to be there...be there. Even if you think you didn't matter. You probably did.

Treehouses I have known

As a kid, I lived on the edge of San Antonio. We had deer wandering in our backyard. We had oak trees that were probably older than the United States. Today, however, that area is surrounded by industry and cement...but I remember it when...

I recall the treehouse behind my next door neighbor's house. Simple enough and built about eight feet off the ground where four oak trees huddled together, it was our meeting place. We made plans there to build ground level forts from discarded pieces of houses that were under construction nearby. We wrote plays (believe it or not) which always had to end with a pie in the face. (We were Laurel and Hardy fans, too) Many truths were told up in the treehouse, many tears were shed, many unjustices revealed and triumphal battles as well. It was wonderful. A couple hundred feet away from the main house, we lived like pirates, or cowboys or just scavengers making the best of dirt and rocks.

My most memorable moment in the treehouse came on afternoon as things wemt along as they normally do, when sweet Patty gave me a serious look and firmly said, "Don't move." I glanced around in just enough time to see her swinging a two-by-four toward my head. The board went down painfully on my shoulder and the wasp that had perched there flew up and stung me on the neck. So in addition to a wasp sting, my shoulder hurt like the dickens.

We got years of laughter out of telling that story, about how she was trying to protect me from injury and pretty much maximized it instead. But that was how our friendship evolved. A series of trips and falls and runs and errors. But it was solid through and through. Even though we never really stayed in contact much after college.

When my mom died, after my dad died some ten years before, Patty walked through the funeral line