The Back Yard

The tallest, scraggly peak of the hemlock might very well have scratched the clouds on some days. It sure seemed well high enough for that, especially to me, a child of 5 years, probably not much taller than 3 feet. The tree was so many times my height. I would lie on the ground and look up into those draping branches and I couldn’t see the top. It was a crisscrossed mass of half-inch needles and tiny cones all hanging down lazily from each sappy branch.

My feet pressed against the rung of the ladder. Dad let me put it up against the playhouse that was directly under the hemlock so that I could climb up to the roof and sit there. There was something novel and cheeky about sitting on the roof of the little structure. But at this moment I was sitting on the ladder, my behind uncomfortable against the rung and my little legs stiffening to ease up there and put more weight on my bare toes. It was an old, dry, wooden ladder not used much, and set at such an angle as to be nearly flat. I was lying on it as if it were a hammock, and though a little person, I still had to manage and balance properly on the rungs that were a foot apart.

The back yard was always darker and lonelier than the front yard because our pool was out front. That’s where everyone was drawn like ants to a watermelon rind. Everyone wanted in the water. I did, too, most of the time. But there was solace to be had in the quieter, greener, tree-ier back yard. And I worried that the backyard felt sad to be neglected, always in the shadow of the front yard’s blue and thrilling pool. So I liked to come be in the back, so as to help it feel some appreciation.

The playhouse came to being as a crate used to ship a printing press. My dad was a printer, and he lugged the thing home from work because it was such a good, solid rectangular box that could so easily be transformed into a place for us kids. He thought of things like that. He put a pitched roof on it with shingles. And he made a door and a window. I fit inside nicely. It smelled of hemlock because the tiny needles littered the ground and the floor. We had a broom in the house, in fact, to try to keep up with the constant piles.

My place in my sibling lineup was the very last of five. My sister, who was the next up, was four years older, which put her in a bracket that was most of the time much removed from my own. She was into the Beatles and the Monkees while I was still dressing up Barbie and trying to braid her hair. My brothers were much older, usually relegating me to the sideline jobs of “water girl” or “nurse” in their big kid rough games, or using me as a cute prop when flirting with teenage girls. I was a good draw, I think. But all this meant I was often alone as a kid. I made up my games alone and played them alone. And it was fine. No sadness at all. I was happy to be on my own most of the time, and happier still when I had my cat Sahib with me. We played chase and monsters and scratch-me-if-you-can.

The back yard is full of towering oaks, the dear hemlock, and lilac bushes. The ground is every shade of green with grasses and matted green moss. Squirrels and deer and rabbits coexist with few fears, and black bears saunter through once in a while. But humans are usually scarce. When one of us ventures back, there is the quiet of a private club being breached… and one feels the need to tread lightly.

The playhouse was always a tiny bit scary, with its entrance facing away from our house. Something could be in there. Or someone. But I would take a breath and venture around, at last, casually and calmly so if something were in there, I would not startle it but I would also show it that I was casual and calm and then it wouldn’t take advantage. Making that corner took guts. I had to steel myself and do some persuading in my little brain.

“There is nothing in there. Stop being a baby,” I would think. “Stand up and go on.” And I would, and then it would so suddenly be okay. Safe and occupied by just me. Whatever game I was planning to play would commence, my imagination doing its thing. Easy peasy.

But first my dirty six-inch feet had to be brave. My spine had to straighten and overrule any other play-grimy body part that balked at stepping forward and around that blind corner of the playhouse. It was good training, since we must often be alone when facing blind corners. While others are screaming with glee in the pool around front, there are simply times when we must go on elsewhere alone, on our own bare feet, with our own gameplan and a promise to our own heart that we will be casual, calm, and downright fearless.