If These Walls Could Talk

Bittersweet feeling today having accomplished a lot in one day. I got my nooks and crannies cleaned, eradicating all dust bunnies that were present and accounted for.  When my husband got home from work at noon, he suggested we tackle a long awaited project.... Tearing down the tree house in the back yard. When we moved into this house 16 years ago (this month I believe), my husband built a tree house in one of the pecan trees. It was a double decker house tucked back behind the cedars. I remember arguing with him that  a simple, basic tree house would be good enough, but no.... It had to be more complicated than that. The project that should have taken a weekend, turned out to be an ongoing, unfinished work in progress. My son and his buddies took up the task adding a fireman's escape pole, netting and rope ladders. It's been years since anyone has played in that tree house and the Oklahoma wind had taken quite a toll on it. It was a breath shy of collapsing and taking our fence with it.... It was time for it to go. It's one of those things that you don't think about as being emotionally diffcult until you get in the middle of it and the memories come flooding back. With each board that was taken down today and each little addition that had been added, my mind couldn't help but wonder back a few years. I remember looking out the window and seeing nappy headed, barefoot boys (or at least my child was barefoot), plotting and planning, schemeing and concocting big plans and lots of mischief.  As I carried the boards away I wondered out loud if they sat up there in their secret hide-away and planned how they would one day go into business together. Was that where their dreams of traveling to foreign lands and spreading the gospel originated from. If the walls of that tree house could talk, what stories might it tell? If I only knew...