Tree Houses & Brothers
We never had a tree house when we were kids, but we had what we called The Fort. It was a standard wooden structure with a ladder, a pointed roof, a slide going down from the top level. It connected to a swing set, where I'd perfected what I saw as the art of graceful swinging, my legs pointed in front of me, my hair swinging and flowing behind. Whenever I swung it's like I thought I was being observed from afar.
"How beautiful, how lovely!" My imaginary observers remarked as they looked out their kitchen windows. "Look how her hair trails out behind her! What an elegant and whimsical girl!"
As a kid The Fort was magical—a space that was just for us. Sometimes it was for reading, sometimes for talking, sometimes for jumping wildly from the upper level to the swing rope and totally busting your finger. Sometimes my best friend Missy and I played library—this meant we carted all our books out from our bedrooms and heaved them up the ladder, where my brother Matt could then check out copies of Little House on the Prarie or The Babysitters' Club or the American Girl books from us. Then an hour later we'd cart all the books back inside. A thrilling activity!
At least that one was kinder than some of our other favorites.
Examples:
1) Playing Jail
We would lock Matt up in Missy's kitchen pantry, giving him a glass of water and a piece of bread. Sometimes we didn't give him the whole piece of bread—just the crusts. I'd like to say Missy and I took turns in jail, too, but you know.
2) Playing Witches
Missy and I (usually while my brother was in jail in the pantry) would eat ice cream at her kitchen table, mixing in sprinkles and pretending they were children's bones in our satanic brew.
3) Playing Fight Championships
We'd prop up the couch cushions in Missy's basement to create a wrestling ring, where then my brother and I would face off in an intense rumble, slamming each other into pillows. Somehow Missy never had to participate in this—it was solely for some kind of grand reenactment of sibling tension.
4) Playing Torture Your Brother
This involved putting gel on my brother's face when he was sleeping and/or asking him questions about girls and trying to get him to talk in his sleep. It sometimes worked, but now I imagine he was just playing along.
Kids are mean! I wasn't a cruel sister, I swear. The problem is that Matt was tenacious about tagging along, and I was expected to be a good sister and let him. Most of the time we were cool—playing Atari, or flashlight tag, or coming up with elaborate dance numbers in the basement to TaleSpin songs. But when you're three years apart, the age gap is just enough so that you can have a lot of fun together but also annoy the shit out of each other. So in the time-honored tradition of older siblings everywhere, many of Missy and my's activities revolved around getting my brother to leave us alone. To my recollection they never worked. Matt didn't seem to care he was being bullied.
Looking back now, I see how often he and I were together during those years before middle school turned us into obnoxious people. It's something I didn't get with my youngest brother, Scott—eight years apart is a lot different than three years apart. When I was with Scott, I was a substitute mom. When I was with Matt, I was a brawling partner.
But anyway. The Fort.
When we moved to Georgia we took it with us. By this time it'd lost some of its appeal, either because I no longer had Missy or because I was getting older. Matt and Scott now were the ones who spent the most time in it. Eventually it became infested with carpenter bees, the swings broke, and nobody used it much at all. It took on a strange, abandoned, decaying smell as the wood got older and the Georgia humidity and pollen took its toll. I don't remember what happened to it at the end, whether my dad broke it down and burned it or we just left it with the house when we moved to Indiana. At that point it didn't matter, because the magic of The Fort had already converted from a physical object to a memory to dig back up when we're reminiscing about our childhood.
"How beautiful, how lovely!" My imaginary observers remarked as they looked out their kitchen windows. "Look how her hair trails out behind her! What an elegant and whimsical girl!"
As a kid The Fort was magical—a space that was just for us. Sometimes it was for reading, sometimes for talking, sometimes for jumping wildly from the upper level to the swing rope and totally busting your finger. Sometimes my best friend Missy and I played library—this meant we carted all our books out from our bedrooms and heaved them up the ladder, where my brother Matt could then check out copies of Little House on the Prarie or The Babysitters' Club or the American Girl books from us. Then an hour later we'd cart all the books back inside. A thrilling activity!
At least that one was kinder than some of our other favorites.
Examples:
1) Playing Jail
We would lock Matt up in Missy's kitchen pantry, giving him a glass of water and a piece of bread. Sometimes we didn't give him the whole piece of bread—just the crusts. I'd like to say Missy and I took turns in jail, too, but you know.
2) Playing Witches
Missy and I (usually while my brother was in jail in the pantry) would eat ice cream at her kitchen table, mixing in sprinkles and pretending they were children's bones in our satanic brew.
3) Playing Fight Championships
We'd prop up the couch cushions in Missy's basement to create a wrestling ring, where then my brother and I would face off in an intense rumble, slamming each other into pillows. Somehow Missy never had to participate in this—it was solely for some kind of grand reenactment of sibling tension.
4) Playing Torture Your Brother
This involved putting gel on my brother's face when he was sleeping and/or asking him questions about girls and trying to get him to talk in his sleep. It sometimes worked, but now I imagine he was just playing along.
Kids are mean! I wasn't a cruel sister, I swear. The problem is that Matt was tenacious about tagging along, and I was expected to be a good sister and let him. Most of the time we were cool—playing Atari, or flashlight tag, or coming up with elaborate dance numbers in the basement to TaleSpin songs. But when you're three years apart, the age gap is just enough so that you can have a lot of fun together but also annoy the shit out of each other. So in the time-honored tradition of older siblings everywhere, many of Missy and my's activities revolved around getting my brother to leave us alone. To my recollection they never worked. Matt didn't seem to care he was being bullied.
Looking back now, I see how often he and I were together during those years before middle school turned us into obnoxious people. It's something I didn't get with my youngest brother, Scott—eight years apart is a lot different than three years apart. When I was with Scott, I was a substitute mom. When I was with Matt, I was a brawling partner.
But anyway. The Fort.
When we moved to Georgia we took it with us. By this time it'd lost some of its appeal, either because I no longer had Missy or because I was getting older. Matt and Scott now were the ones who spent the most time in it. Eventually it became infested with carpenter bees, the swings broke, and nobody used it much at all. It took on a strange, abandoned, decaying smell as the wood got older and the Georgia humidity and pollen took its toll. I don't remember what happened to it at the end, whether my dad broke it down and burned it or we just left it with the house when we moved to Indiana. At that point it didn't matter, because the magic of The Fort had already converted from a physical object to a memory to dig back up when we're reminiscing about our childhood.