A Childhood Memory: blog entry no. 4

© Photo: Flickr/ discofingers

  Every time I look back at my childhood, a lot of good (and bad) memories come to mind but the one that always hits me hard is an image of an old tree house among huge trees. It doesn't look like any of those amazing things you see in movies all the time.

 It doesn't even look remotely close to the one in the photo above. In fact, it was more of an old, wooden bed balanced between two branches with a make shift roof of plywood and cardboard walls. But despite its shabby, rundown look, it always holds a special place in my heart. The treehouse was the symbol of the greatest summer I’ve ever had.

 I was in 4^th grade at that time, and we just moved to our new house. It was located in a private, 4 hectare location my mom’s family owned in Butuan. Only four big houses occupied the huge land. The vast landscape was split in the middle by a big road fenced in by tall trees leading to the houses, and on the right side of the road was a big rice field maintained by my grandfather’s hired workers. The caretaker of the land sold flowers for a living, and I never got used the amazing sight of her flower plantation filled with every flower you could think of,  plus little mounds with round little bushes and arranged boulders. Behind the house was a very long creek with ducks from our neighbor, where my cousins and I played on the banks during rainy days. All those places are divided by tall, slender trees so that our compound was covered with a huge canopy of tree branches. They were never creepy, because when the breeze moved, lots of tiny yellow leaves fell like rain and at night, those trees glowed with actual, live fireflies! In the summer, it was simply a paradise with the flowers and the fruits and the breeze and the butterflies. Our place was a landscape architect’s dream.

 My cousins and I, we cherished those summers. We ran around and played, and we built bonfires at night. Our uncle, ever the architect, built us a treehouse, and under the tree house was a hammock to sleep in. The tree house became our hideout. Every second of the day that we could, we spent there. It could hardly fit all six of us, not to mention how rowdy we were as kids. We stashed the place with books, food, toys, and blankets. It was a very special place to us. As a city girl, the country was drastically different from what I was used to, but in a good way. For the first time in a long time, we got to enjoy summer without television, computer, phones and video games. For the first time, we got to spend time with our family.

 However, time goes by and people change. When my grandfather died, my aunts and uncles and my own parents grew busier, and suddenly the ducks were gone, the creek dried up, grass began to grow, the tree house began to rot, and no one had time to maintain the place. Me and my cousins, we began to grow up. Our priorities changed, and even though we were still the best of friends, our hangouts became different. We traded our little haven for trips to Manila or Cebu, for road trips, movie dates, night outs and parties. We shed our childhood and left behind our tree house days.

We still live there now, in the family compound, and the flowers still bloom, the fireflies still come out at night, the place still has an echo of its former majesty, but with no one to appreciate its beauty, it’s sadder than I remember it to be.

 But time and time again, the tree house will always come with the memory of children with dirty feet, messy hair and wide smiles. The tree house will always remind me of our huge house packed with my mom and her sisters cooking, my uncles and their loud laughter, the contented smiles of my grandparents and the noise of everyone talking over everyone else. The tree house will always make me remember the smell of leaves and sweat. The tree house is the symbol of summer that felt like a dream, our golden summer.