How old was I on that summer day when my cousins decided that we should build a treehouse on Mimi’s land near the garden and she let us?
I don’t think it stood for very long; just that one golden-grey summer that always blends into a saturated, sun-lit moment in time, looping the same scene over and over
and over again.
I was too scared to climb to the top, remember?
But I cannot recall the day nor my age nor my height. I cannot recall the exact pitch of my older sister’s voice or if I’d taken yet to covering my smile with a well-placed hand. Had I learned about the color grey yet?
All I recall of that day is orange and yellow leaves falling like manifestations of the universe come to say hello to the dirt paths that paved the ground.
And oh God, the wind, the remarkable, soul-rushing wind, and the laughter elicited by some childhood quotable, something about autumn in the summertime, and the flush of my cheeks from embarrassment—pride?—at the attention.
We’re such different beings now, and maybe something that beautiful and uncomplicated was never really meant to last. Or maybe it was never so simple as it seemed.
Sometimes I think life is a guessing game. Sometimes I think I’m the only one still playing.
I keep looking back and wondering if something went wrong or if this is just how things are. If life is just an endless stream of slowly not knowing the people you once knew. Of loving people that you couldn’t name the favorite colors of. People that don’t know yours.
Maybe as we got older I was supposed to move on from fireworks and late nights on the farm and hide and seek and watching fantasy shows in the trailer, and the wind, oh the wind, but how do you move on from something so fundamentally part of who you were and are and who you still haven’t become and who you always will be?.
How old was I on that ageless day when my cousins and my sister—right?—decided to build a treehouse on Mimi’s land near the garden and she let them? How old was I before that line blurred?
That treehouse, though, that treehouse that they (we?) built before college or antidepressants or not being kids anymore or hope or regret or driving permits or a lack thereof or really knowing ourselves.
Before it was unclear which of those things were good and which were not. I think I’m getting it wrong now.
I’m trying to stay on track, honest. But that’s not what treehouses are for. There’s a lot of things, though, that treehouses aren’t for. Instead of the practically proverbial “NO GIRLS
ALLOWED,” please can the sign say, “LEAVE TIME AND ITS
PASSAGE AT THE DOOR.” I’ll bring my own paint, you just have to promise.
Don’t say that, I know that, I know, no time doesn’t stop or slow down or even really care about you and so it always keeps moving and you never get to go back and bask in the weightless world of yesterday or yell at it for giving you something so precious that you don’t get to keep you never get to go back I’ll never get to never
ever—
But that’s not the point.
Here’s one thing I know,
one thing that’s for sure:
If I could, I’d go back to that golden-grey, summer-autumn, ageless, weightless day. I’d splay my hands out, palms facing the underneath of my own smaller-than-now tennis shoes, and I would help to carefully lift my younger self up the first few steps of the shaky latter and watch and laugh or maybe cry as I made my way to the top, climbing into an unsturdy wooden treehouse of uncertainty and loss and tomorrow as though climbing into the self
that I was yet to be.
…
(I think I told it wrong.)
(Please.)
(Can we start again?)