The Tree House

By Jerry Mack Grubbs

She was agile as a boy when she climbed up into the tree. This girl was the only female I had ever invited to my tree house. I didn't actually invite her; she just stepped into my mind as I slept. This girl, this dream girl appeared at the base of the tree and said, "I want to share your tree house." She didn't say, "I want to visit your tree house."

This was a girl. Could she even climb the rope? Pushing through all that mental fog I said, "Do you need some help getting up the tree?" Before she could respond I began climbing down to help her. She acted irritated that I would think she needed my help. Irritation wasn't a feeling I wanted there in my secluded world. "This girl better get a different attitude if she is going to share my tree house," I thought. From the moment she sat down on the elevated platform next to me she became a co-owner of all my building efforts. Every board hauled up the rope, every nail driven into the tree and every hour spent planning how I would build my hideaway gave way to a feeling that it had never felt complete until she sat there next to me.

Accepting her was like drinking a glass of refreshing cold milk. She wore all white: white shorts, white blouse, white canvas shoes. She was fair complexioned and had blondish brown hair. When she saw that I was barefoot she removed her shoes. The irritation she originally stirred in me from her independent attitude faded as I watched her remove her shoes. But what drew me in to her were her eyes and her smile. She told me that she was eleven.

Touching her with my eyes, she spilled into me and covered all my insides. Although I didn't realize it at that moment, I would soon learn that I would never feel alone again. She stayed with me in my mind as I journeyed through my life, not necessarily as a living personage but more as a feeling. Down in the woods up in that tree house I forged a relationship with her that would stand the test of time. The tree no longer stands. Development has overrun and obliterated the forest that grew just beyond the home of my youth.

Before leaving for college in 1964 I returned to the tree house and renewed the memories I had created there through the years. On a sunny Sunday afternoon, the 5th of September 1965, before leaving for my mission for the LDS Church, I went back to the tree house and spent some quiet time. It would be the last time I ever sat and dangled my feet off the edge of that platform and looked down on the world below. Four years to the day of that last visit high up in the tree house, I walked through the doors of the Salt Lake LDS Temple and was married to my wife Kaye. Although it has been forty-two years since that last day I climbed up into the tree house it continues to be a place I can go to in my mind and find peace in my heart and a renewed resolve to strive to love others unconditionally as the girl in my dreams loved me.