five red balloons

Let’s yell out colours now!  I glance over at my sister as we fly through the air on the backyard swings.  Okay, okay, close your eyes now, just say the colours that you see on the backs of your eyelids as you float through the sunset, go! 

Red

Green

Purple no purply brown no you know that colour

Yeah yeah I know that colour – orange!

Black

That pink colour that Oma always likes!

Amber!

These swings were built for the younger versions of us; our longer legs are almost tangling, and our laughter is too.  Half-forgotten childhood phrases joining and morphing like soap bubbles

touched the cherry tree first

no you didn’t

your legs are longer it’s not fair

shhh Mrs. Walker might hear us

I reached the bumps before you did!

It’s a kind of code that we perfected on infinite summer evenings, when the world seemed limitlessly golden, or on rainy Mondays, when playing outside for our recess was an enforced rule and puddles became part of the experience. 

The cherry tree grew up with us, a thick trunk and branches that spindled to nothing, with blossoms that gave my bedroom a pink glow every day in the spring.  I don’t remember when it became so established, an underground network of roots, like fingers, expanding everywhere; I do remember my dad initially telling us not to climb on it because it wasn’t well-rooted (and I think he used that to make a spiritual analogy). 

When Peter was born one April, we carried him outside, and my mom exclaimed over the soft petals that landed on his wrinkled newborn face.  Now, he’s twelve years old, and she still remembers his birthday month by the blooming cherry tree. 

The branches from that tree crept, almost unnoticeably, further and further forward until they created a hole in my bedroom window screen. Delighted, I removed the screen.  Glowing through the cherry blossoms, there spilled extravagant sunlight, golden-pink, turning my hair red, painting my skin neon.  The stretched shadow of my bed was dark against the pure golden light on my walls. I could reach out and touch the fringe of fragile petals.

I told my mom about it, one day – about those moments before sunset, how the perfume of the blossoms and the light on my face seemed to flow fluidly through my soul with a passion for living, and she smiled that smile that says, I don’t exactly understand what you’re saying, dear, but I love that you feel that way because I love you.  And then a few days later, she came to me, almost crying, and she said, Honey, I have something to tell you.  I’m so sorry, but the gardeners came today and I forgot to tell them not to prune the cherry tree, and they cut off the branch that comes in through your window.  I’m so sorry.

And I had to hug her to stop her from crying, and I had to tell her that everything would be okay.  And maybe… maybe she had understood exactly what I’d meant about the cherry tree, after all. 

For a long time, my sister shared that bedroom with me.  We talked about running away, we talked about the girl down the street with the canopy bed.  I told long convoluted stories about the adventures of a boy named Jamie, because I was always the storyteller, even though I was younger. And we talked about renovations we would make to our room if we could.  (Putting up a wall to separate our sides of the room was a given, but we allowed a door so we could communicate - on the off-chance that we would actually want to talk to each other.  Instead of a two-part bathroom next to us, we converted it to a secret, invisible fridge, with magical properties that kept it stocked with jars of pickles, and sour candies, and cinnamon raisin toast.) 

Sometimes, we would sneak out our windows onto the roof, climb down a level, and jump to the deck below.  Once, I sprained my ankle doing this, but I didn’t tell my mom.  I don’t think it ever occurred to us that this could be a dangerous thing to do; I don’t think there was ever any reason we needed to exit this way, either.  It just seemed like a more exciting way of leaving the house. 

I remember wandering into the school room one day, sick with a cold, and Luke and Carmel had just set up a library.  This was a clever scheme in which they organized all my parents’ books, made all the other children sign a permission sheet to read them, and then charged them late fees if they forgot to return them.  The beauty of the idea, of course, was that this restraint on the books made them only more desirable to everyone else. 

I was holding a sheet of stickers, carrying a Kleenex in my other hand, my throat was so swollen and sore that I could hardly talk and a fever was pounding through my head, and for some reason, this was the moment I chose to think to my philosophical nine-year old self, “I wonder if I’ll remember this instant for ever?”  

I do remember it forever.  Be careful what you wish for.

And the kitchen, where my mom made us peppermint tea for all the sore throats we ever had.  It was such a comfortable room, and the floor was so sittable. Nothing was expected to be perfect in that room; as a result, everything was perfect.  The kitchen table had a warm look, like at any minute now, people who loved each other would be sitting down together and eating hot vegetable soup with sourdough bread, saying normal things in strange exaggerated languages, like Passez-moi le beurre, s’il-vous-plait? and giving responses in another language altogether, like Danke schoen.  There would be foot fights under the table without my parents’ knowledge.  There would the clang of spoons in bowls, and vast amounts of food disappearing within minutes.  I do, after all, have seven brothers.

The piano stood in our living room, keys lined up like a mouth full of teeth waiting to bite me.  I hated practicing.  Long evenings were spent over the piano, tears dripping down my face while my dad stood next to me.  Play it again.  Play it seven times in a row perfectly.  Yes, you can do it.  There was one song about a cat and a pudding bag string- the cat ran off with the pudding bag string- and I asked my dad what a pudding bag was, but he didn’t know. He seemed to think I was trying to distract him.  I wasn’t.  I genuinely wanted to know about this strange phrase that tasted like custard and raisins in my mouth, but no one could tell me.  And I stayed up past my bedtime that night, practicing the final line of black notes that blurred into smears of ink as I cried silently, wishing and wishing that the cat had never seen the pudding bag string.

Back on the swings now, and I am twenty-three.  April blossoms are floating onto my legs as I touch the tree branch with my flying feet.  The deck is stained and slimy with rain, like it always was after the winter; the tree house has spider webs in the eaves, and there is a forgotten shovel rusting in the far corner.  I know, because I checked, even though I could hardly fit through the latched front door.  This tree house had been the place we made picnics, the place we played out our adventure stories - a massive ungainly wooden ship floating awkwardly in the ocean of the sandbox, while pirates who looked suspiciously like my brothers tried to climb aboard.  My dad had built this tree house, and once a year, all of us would pull out sleeping bags and pillows for a sleepover inside it, and my mom would warn him not to tell us scary stories because we would have nightmares.  And so, he would tell stories about pioneers and the great frontier and forest fires, and I would fall asleep pretending to be a prairie girl who had to survive on her own.  Mosquitoes would wake us up at some point in the night - at some point, and send us straggling inside, one by one, to my patient mom, who had expected this all along.

This house isn’t ours anymore - it’s not mine, it’s not my parents’.  It is about to be sold, and I live somewhere else.  Besides, it doesn’t really look like our home anymore.  The kitchen table is gone, and so is the piano.  The whole place is painted beige, out of courtesy to potential buyers and their lack of imagination.  There are flyers pushed under the front door by people who were never barked at by our dog.

It is so familiar, and not familiar at all, but I am jumping off the swing, and this I remember - the jolt of hitting the ground running - and the wet grass and mud curling between my toes.  I am me, picking flowers from our backyard to bring to my mom, dirt mixed with rain dripping down my hand.  I am me, wondering if I should open the gate or just climb over it.  I am me, bare feet pressing against the tree quickly to follow my brother’s lead, foot curled around a knot in the trunk to stand up straight.  I am me, holding in my palm the apple blossoms, with the round petals cupping rainwater. 

I am me, but I am not me. My life is no longer simple enough to construct with sidewalk chalk in the hot sun of the front cul-de-sac. I can no longer be simply a stick figure walking down wavy pink roads to a home with a bed and a table, a grocery store and a church, and the eternal vacation destination of Blueberry Mountain somewhere near the basketball net.  Reality is being thrown at me like the pile of wet cherry blossoms my brother sprayed in my face - laughing, yes, and I’m laughing too, but somewhere deep down, I am

a little bit scared about what God has for me

a little bit excited about what God has for me

and a little bit wondering

how I grew up.

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