The Treehouse of Memories

The sun was scorching my back as I scrambled up the rusty ladder leading to the treehouse. It was not yet July but already hot enough to cook an egg on your driveway. 

My black hoodie was probably not the most practical thing to wear but it was all I ever wore anymore. I wore my hoodie on rainy days, sunny days, chilly days, and pretty much every day.

I had been avoiding the treehouse and the memories brought with it, for as long as I could manage but I finally gave in, I wanted to visit it one last time. The treehouse used to be a source of happiness for me but now it only brought back distant memories of better times. The branches scraped against my arms as I climbed up tearing holes into my hoodie. 

The summer when my father first built the treehouse for my best friend and I felt like ages ago now but I can still remember it clearly. I can vividly recall embracing my father and smelling the earthiness of oak wood that lingered on his clothes after he finished sawing. The sound of his hammer rhythmically nailing the wood together. The excitement I had felt when it was finally completed and I had my first picnic with my friend inside of it. 

We had spread a checkered tablecloth on the floor and brought up a grass woven basket filled with the lunch my mother had prepared us. We sat cross-legged on the checkered cloth as we listened to the creaking of the old maple’s branches when the wind blew. In the treehouse, we felt as though we were floating above everything else, perpendicular with the birds. 

We sipped glasses of ice-cold lemonade and peeled off the crusts of our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches before eating them. Then we climbed down the ladder and walked onto the bridge over the creek in my backyard. We could hear the burbling of the water below rushing over the stones. I leaned over the iron railing and crumbled the bread into the water below. A tail swished and before I knew it the bread had disappeared into a cloud of bubbles.

But that was when I was younger when I was more naive. That was before my friend moved to the other side of the country leaving me alone. That was before my Father was gone.

I reached the entrance of the treehouse ducked my head and crawled inside. When my Father first built the treehouse I was much shorter than my present height. I could still fit inside the doorframe but it was a tighter squeeze than before. The exposed wooden beams on the rooftop were now covered in cobwebs and above the doorframe stood an abandoned birds nest. Carpenter ants had invaded the windowsill but none of this bothered me. I laid on my back my hands shielding the sunlight from my eyes, I needed to think.

I knew in my heart it wasn’t her fault she had to move but I couldn’t help feeling resentment towards her. After she left the world around me seemed to crumble. School was relentless and boring without her cheeky comments between classes. We used to meet up at my treehouse every day after school regardless of the weather. I remember sitting on the treehouse floor looking up at the ceiling and listening to the pitter platter of raindrops. 

I remember carving our names into the treehouse’s soft wooden floor. Without looking up I slid my hand across the wooden floor until my fingers traced the grooves we had carved with my father’s pocket knife years before.

I opened my eyes and stared out the window listening to the blue jays’ fierce cries. The birds appeared to be arguing as they travelled around gathering supplies to build their nest and feed their young. 

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of an elementary school bus meandering out of my view. It was stopping every few houses to drop off a child. I heard the screech of the brakes and then the joyful screams of children racing each other home. 

I remember being that age and racing my friend off the bus and up the ladder of the treehouse. We would slide off our backpacks under the protection of the old maple’s canopy that supported the treehouse. Then swiftly climb up the then freshly painted ladder with ease. Years later the ladder was now rusty and a few prongs were missing because just like with my family my father was the one holding it together.

Now without his care, the ladder was destroyed just like me and my mother. She didn’t even attempt to talk to me anymore and every night we ate dinner in silence listening only to the crunching of our food. I can remember a time where we would laugh and joyfully retell the day’s events to each other but that was when my father was alive. 

Why did he have to go on that hike, I thought sitting in the treehouse alone. The last memory I have of my father was him leaving the house to go on his weekly Sunday hike like he always did in the afternoon. He kissed the top of my head before slipping out the door. He usually returned within a few hours but when he still wasn’t home by dinner we started to worry. 

My mother called his cellphone over and over to no avail. I remember pacing through the house as my mother’s phone kept repeating ‘’the person you are trying to reach is unavailable’’ in its robotic voice. This voice on top of everything else was starting to make me go crazy so twelve year old me went up into the treehouse to calm down.

My mother eventually called the authorities to report my father as missing. My mother and I were still clinging on to the last strand of hope that he would return alive but we weren’t that lucky. That night the search party called and said they had found my father’s limp body a few miles of the road. They told us that he was dead and appeared to have been struck by lightning. 

Out of all of the terrible possibilities of what could have happened to my father I never imagined this. I always thought being struck by lightning was so rare and such a freak accident. Well, I know now that the thing about freak accidents is they don't feel all that rare when they happen to someone you know.

In the treehouse, I put my head on my knees and began to cry. Mosquitos buzzed around my ears and dirt stuck to my warm wet face. Then I began to feel a little better and realized that the treehouse actually still did make me happier. Reliving the old memories of my father and the treehouse made me think of how many more new memories I could make. Lying in the treehouse I finally was able to accept that my father was dead and never coming back from his hike. I also decided that I wasn’t going to destroy the treehouse because it was one of the only things keeping my sane right now. I climbed down the rusty metal ladder and bid farewell to the old maple ''see you tomorrow,'' I whispered to the ancient tree.