Me and my brothers had a spate of building activity that lasted about three or four summers in a row. Each year we built a tree house in the biggest apple tree with the widest limbs, and every year our mom cautioned us against harming the tree with too many nails. We pulled out almost all of the nails at the end of the summer along with the house.
Each summer we free-formed what the new tree house would be. My favorite was the last one we made. I remember it because the boy next door actually asked if he could help us when he saw us carrying lumber to the backyard. He pretty much never spoke to us, and we wondered why he wanted to help us. "I just wanna build something." Oh. OK. Instead of the typical roof style hut, we made a ramp that gradually wound up among the branches.
As we swayed in the breeze on the top limbs of the tree, we called out to our mom in the kitchen, and she promptly told us to come down. Our aeries were popular headquarters for apple fights, the bigger boys gaining the top spots in order to give the hardest pelting with the small apples that grew on the six trees in the backyard. One lone kid would wander into an ambush and WHOMP! WHOMP! WHOMP! ten tiny, hard green apples came at you from points unseen by kids hiding in the treetops. Man, those hurt bad!
My brothers must have started puberty or something because one summer they decided to ban me from the tree house with a group of boys. "You can't come in!!" "Yeah, no girls allowed!!!" I was pretty ticked off, because I had some comics in there to read. Of course they hated my comics; too "girly". I didn't really care about their comics with hyper-muscled dudes in leotards. They were stupid, and the story was always the same: some guy gets blasted/gamma-rayed/star-beamed/whatever into an extraordinary being, becomes a hero, saves the world, and gets the pretty girl. Yawn. Boy fantasies.
I liked Archie, Richie Rich, Casper the Friendly the Ghost, and Lil' Devil because I liked the cute way he was drawn. I guess all these transgressions and more must have been enough for banishment, or they had a Playboy in there that they found, or they were planning some nasty trick, or they simply didn't like me. Who knows? Luckily pop culture had prepared me for just such an occasion through The Little Rascals, and I knew the the boy brain would change right around dinner time, no matter how determined or bossy them came off.
The tree houses were also great getaways when tensions ran high in the household. I could climb into a totally different space and escape. There was a blanket on the floor, and I usually brought with me a package of crackers and some comics to peruse. It felt like such a luxury just to be alone and think. One afternoon I was upset about something, maybe an argument with my mom, and with an air of determination, I climbed up the ramp of our house determined to climb to the very top branches. In my haste and anger, I lost my grip on a series of branches I had scaled 100 times before. The next thing I knew I was sailing through the air. I remember being shocked because I had never fallen from any one of our trees before.
My mom said we climbed like monkeys and that was true. I felt limber and agile and alive and happy and hidden among the beautiful branches. For many years, I reclined in the crooked bent of a limb, leaning against the solid thick trunk of that tree studying the light as it passed through the leaves. It gave me a lifelong love of arbors, trees, apples, and the amazing seasons of New York. For a series of summers, the patch of woods at the bottom of our street had a felled tree from one of the many lightning summer storms we have. I remember the laughing faces of giggling kids beaming out at me from different levels of the downed tree as we bounced up and down on the branches.
I fell on my back onto the hard-packed dirt underneath the trees. I was in shock. As I lie there I thought to myself, "Great. I'm dead and no one knows." Or much less cared. After the scene I had come from, I didn't bother to hide my tears. There wasn't anyone around anyway. After that summer, we moved on to other things. My brothers played their sports and I went swimming or read alone in my room. It marked the beginning of the loneliest period of my life and it was the end of my childhood. I didn't tell anyone about my fall from the apple tree, because my mom would have banned me from climbing, so often did she worry aloud about such a fact. But I survived it, and as I limped my way back to the house, to sulk in the dark basement and watch t.v., I felt proud of keeping it to myself.
My mom said we climbed like monkeys and that was true. I felt limber and agile and alive and happy and hidden among the beautiful branches. For many years, I reclined in the crooked bent of a limb, leaning against the solid thick trunk of that tree studying the light as it passed through the leaves. It gave me a lifelong love of arbors, trees, apples, and the amazing seasons of New York. For a series of summers, the patch of woods at the bottom of our street had a felled tree from one of the many lightning summer storms we have. I remember the laughing faces of giggling kids beaming out at me from different levels of the downed tree as we bounced up and down on the branches.I fell on my back onto the hard-packed dirt underneath the trees. I was in shock. As I lie there I thought to myself, "Great. I'm dead and no one knows." Or much less cared. After the scene I had come from, I didn't bother to hide my tears. There wasn't anyone around anyway. After that summer, we moved on to other things. My brothers played their sports and I went swimming or read alone in my room. It marked the beginning of the loneliest period of my life and it was the end of my childhood. I didn't tell anyone about my fall from the apple tree, because my mom would have banned me from climbing, so often did she worry aloud about such a fact. But I survived it, and as I limped my way back to the house, to sulk in the dark basement and watch t.v., I felt proud of keeping it to myself.
Summer glory is yours for the taking.
