I was three years old when my grandfather began to build my tree house. It stands tall in the yard behind my grandparents' house in Mountain Home, Idaho. My grandfather had been an Airman for the United States Air Force for twenty years before working as a machinist, so he knew his way around tools and machinery well. Despite having lost two fingers to his greatest passion, he continued to build things as often as his bruised and battered body would let him.
He started the project by building a ramp, blocked off into little squares and covered with a purple-pink carpet between wooden beams. It rose high above the ground to a platform on which the little white and purple house stood. The window panes were trimmed in white, with tulip-skirted dancing fairiesetched into the glass. The trim, wherever it could be found, was purple. The white door was split horizontally in a way that allowed the top half to be opened without opening the bottom, allowing the air to travel through. Several shelves adorning the walls facing both North and East were decorated with little trinkets such as rocks, twigs, and McDonald's prizes that I imagined would carry on conversations when I wasn't there.
As if a ramp were not the easiest way up, my grandfather included the easiest way down. A slide. Green and with two bumps, it remains some of the best fun I'd had during my childhood. On a good day, I slid down and landed on my rump before getting up to run off somewhere else. On a bad day, I slid down and landed on my rump before slamming into the tree mere feet away and scaring what few birds lived among the branches.
In making the main color purple, my grandfather managed to protect it from the old time cooties of my two cousins. They insisted that it was a "girl color" and would run off, leaving me in peace. When the idea of a sleepover came up, me, myself, and I agreed to spend a night in the fairy-paned house under the stars. I can still remember howls of the wild coyotes on the plains and the groan of big-rigs driving along the highway.
As I grew older, I ventured there less and less, realizing how much I had grown. I could no longer fit through the door, nor sit against one wall and stretch my legs out. I would split the wood of the thin panels making up the ramp as I climbed up. I realized that I was taller than the house itself when I stood on its base. I realized that I was no longer the child I had been.
Today it still stands, rickety and old, but as a piece of my childhood.
Category: Tree House/Sanctuary
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