in your own backyard
3 August 1999

I can't remember now whether it was in a letter or while we were sitting beside Newman Creek throwing pebbles into the water that Jay asked "Can you imagine how fascinating it would be to go back in time and watch yourself as a child?"

It's something I've been trying desperately to do for the past couple of days. Always when I'm at my most vulnerable I find myself trying to connect with the comfort and safety and unconditionality that surrounded me as a child. On long drives I will try to sharpen blurred memories or retrieve those that have trickled down into impossible crevices in order to build up my reserve. To retrieve and remember and catalogue before there is no one left to remind me.

And I've come to the conclusion that the thing that reminds me of my childhood the most is thinking about my backyard.

It wasn't particularly big... a typical suburban-square of a backyard, fenced on three sides, bordered on the fourth by the house, with gates that took me years to figure out how to unlatch and open. But each area is distinctive in my mind: the garden at the bottom of the hill, the patio off the back porch, the peppermint and rhubarb growing behind the garage and the perfumed lilac bushes that my mother loves so much lining the fence. And some parts act like a magic potion for conjuring up those lost childhood memories.

Right behind the house was the large tree with the tree swing. I can still remember watching Dad climb up the ladder to replace the ropes every few years to ensure safe swinging. There was an oval dirt patch beneath the swing where grass refused to compete with feet pushing backwards to gain momentum. Dirt which always supplied the freshest ingredients for the "flying pizzas" that Darin, Mike, and I would create by placing a concoction of mud crust, mud sauce, and mud toppings on the seat of the swing, twisting it up as far as it could be twisted, and then letting it fly... dousing the back of the house in mud and frustrating my parents time and time again.

And there was Nick's large dog cage next to the garage, which served a more active duty as a prison for younger neighbor kids or the headquarters for the club-of-the-week. I rack my brain trying to remember one instance of Nick being locked into the cage, but can only see Crayola markers, notebook paper, and stickers spread out on the flat roof of his wooden dog house and smell the stale hay and straw from the time I was dared to crawl inside.

I can remember how Dad kept the aluminum swing set brightly painted and in tip-top shape to act as our play house, our car, our spaceship, or our picnic area. It could host every kid in the neighborhood at once, granting individual wishes to climb, sit, hang, swing, or slide.

But most of all, I remember the cherry tree. Branching out low to the ground, it was the ultimate climbing tree. I would look up from my own perch and barely see Darin and Mike obscured by the leaves near the top. Dad says he can remember looking at that tree from the back door and not being able to count the number of heads peeking out from behind the bundles of leaves and fruit. On some days, I'd bring a bowl from Mom's kitchen outside and we'd climb into the tree to collect hordes of sour cherries, eating as many as we threw into the bowl. When I'd take it inside and ask Mom to bake a pie, she'd always tell me "You kids are going to get worms."

The night before I left home for my freshman year of college, I took a walk around the backyard and thought a lot about the things that had changed there over the years. The cherry tree was gone by then, struck by lightening a few years before, and in its place was the memory of a sunny spring afternoon spent kissing Matt Dohy in the very same spot. The dog cage sat silent and empty, Nick having passed away just a month before. But the swing was still there... and I climbed onto its seat and pushed off in the dirt with my tip-toes to gain momentum.

I once asked my mother if she regretted not traveling more throughout her life. She told me that some people take trips around the world to find what they are looking for, but that she had found it in her own backyard. Sitting here with tears of loss and nostalgia running down my cheeks, I understand exactly what she meant.

What's in your backyard?