I may take tomorrow off, as a birthday present to myself. For now, I’ll… Describe a great fort you built or a great game you played as a child.

Okay. The absolute best place I had as a child was my little playhouse. But it wasn’t a built playhouse of wood or anything; it was a little place in the trees.

In our yard, there was a big, big pine tree. It was surrounded by one medium sized mulberry tree and a bunch of smaller mulberry trees. To the south of the whole thing was a forsythia bush.

At some point, the big pine died and my dad cut it down.

Some time later, I was checking it out and discovered that there was a whole little area you could go inside to play.

This is really hard to describe, so I went ahead and drew a (bad) picture of it in paint…just to help you get the idea.

Okay. So the right is south. The green blob with the yellow dots is the forsythia bush. The olive parts are the mulberry trees. The one with the maroon dots is the medium mulberry tree that actually produced something. The brown blob is the stump.

My fascination with the playhouse began when I found it, and then found a penny half buried in the dirt. When I went to pick it up, I found another penny! I dug in the dirt. There were literally hundreds of pennies out there! No one in the family claimed to know the origin of the pennies, and my mind raced at the possibilities. (Of course, Marissa later admitted to having taking the pennies from our dad’s big Mr. Magoo bank and burying them out there.) But at the time, it was a mystery, and a profitable one at that. I spent the rest of the day (and probably the week) digging up pennies.

While in the comfortable shade of the forsythia, I started to see how delightful a play place it was, and I began making improvements. Upon first discovery, the forsythia filled up most of the open space between itself and the mulberry area. You really had to hunker down or crawl in there, and I was a little kid. I got some strong twine from the shed and used it to tie the forsythia back. The chain link fence was right behind it, and I tied the twine to the fence, then wrapped it around the bush to the fence on the other side. I pulled and pulled, and the forsythia raised up higher and higher. I stopped when an adult could walk there, but the forsythia branches still offered a canopy overhead. It was like a little roof! Streams of sunlight shone through, but it was still nice and shady, with pretty green leaves and little yellow flowers overhead. I took the old picnic table bench out of the yard and placed it underneath the canopy. Nice!

Using Mom’s good rose cutters without permission, I cut back any mulberry branches that were in my way. There were a couple in the path, and I cut them to the ground. I also cut back the viny thorn thing that would be my constant roommate in the playhouse. I could cut him, but he kept growing back. I knew the area to avoid though.

I also tied back the mulberry trees, gathering them together to ensure maximum usability of the playhouse. I used old wire hangers, opened up, to bind the trees to each other.

Pilfering from Mom’s storage in the shed, I continued to decorate the playhouse with end tables, chairs, wooden pictures, and anything else that caught my eye. I also hung delightful crochet chains that I had made myself from the branches,

When I was done, it was a sight to behold. A real playhouse! I had really made myself a real playhouse! My family was invited to a housewarming. They liked it, but Mom said I had to put some of the stuff back. So I did. I was allowed the picnic table bench, some metal folding chairs, a beat up metal and wood chair, and the worst of the wooden pictures. But that was quite all right. It was still a great place.

Such a great place, in fact, that the playhouse and I remained close throughout my high school years. I would tie it back again each summer, and at one point I even was able to put some old scrap carpet in there, which held up better than you’d think. I’d take my CD player out there and run an extension cord back to the house, and listen to music and read or just think about stuff. If the music wasn’t loud, or I didn’t have the CD player out there or something, sometimes people would look for me and not be able to find me. I remember family members coming out and calling me, and I would be able to see them from within my house of leaves, and they wouldn’t be able to see me. It was grand.

The playhouse is gone now. It was there for a long time – I even got to show it to Ben – but now it is only in my memory. I wish it was still there so I could show it to the kids. I know they’d love it. I also wish there was some kind of amazing place like that here for them to play with, but there’s nothing even close.

Well, they could probably hide behind some of the weeds we have growing in the yard, but that’s not quite the same thing!