Minor/Major: Voice Over Rewrites

The Three Trees

At the bottom of the garden of my mother’s childhood home stood three tall trees, strong and sturdy against the wind and the darkest green against the bright green grass. Hanging from the branch of one of the three trees was an old tyre on a length of old rope, and above it, some wooden planks nailed haphazardly.

When I played in the garden, I didn’t see the old tyre or the haphazard planks. I imagined for myself instead a mighty treehouse of windows of every shape and size; of doors and secret hatches, of balconies, of webs of ropes and the criss-cross of ladders; of wooden bridges connecting one tree to the next, the ideal place for hide and seek and pretend adventures in secret kingdoms. 

The idea of this treehouse I shared with 4 other children, and all of us bickering about what should be on it, in it, and what it would look like if our imaginations alone were enough to build it.

The old tyre and the haphazard planks are long gone now, but the three tall trees remain, as strong against the wind and still the darkest green – but if I close my eyes, our treehouse that never was re-builds itself plank-by-plank, window-by-window, and door-by-door - and then, with a shout, I’m all the way up there and climbing again.

New York Snow

The state of New York in winter almost always saw mountains of snow. My grandfather would spend hours ploughing the snow up one bank in the driveway until it was as tall as he was. This mountain of snow was steep, making it fun to climb before sledding back down to the ground.  My sister and I would dig holes into the base of the mountain and crawl inside. We made it feel like the Wampa's cave from Star Wars. 

We would grab the gigantic icicles hanging from the guttering of the house and decorate the mountain with them. The top of the mountain bristled with the icicles we collected like it was covered in spikes. We went on to pretend the world had ended and we were living out our time in the snow cave. Sometimes we’d fight each other using the icicles as swords.

I must have been 8 years old when my sister and I last played in the snow like that.  My sister was 4 years older than me. She was a teenager by then and didn't want to hang around with me.  After that it was just me and the wampa.

The Castle

In reality it was just a larger than ordinary climbing frame with a trampoline to one side of it, but that’s not how we saw it. We knew it as The Castle.  It stood tall and impressive at the end of the garden, its turrets higher than we could see, as high as the stars – and you couldn’t just walk through its front gate, you had to bounce your way inside; you had to bounce!

Inside, metal poles held the castle’s grand courtyard together and we would swing from them like monkey bars, moving around our kingdom like acrobats. Above our heads a great canopy kept out the rain and the snow – like a mighty tent.  We would escape here – far away and free from the small white house that trapped us, the small white house we called home.

If armies tried to take our castle, we fought them – but when the castle fell to ruin finally, it wasn’t the armies that did it, it was the weather.