The house in the pine trees.

When I was little, about nine or ten years, I lived in a world of my own creation. I had a house in the pine trees that grew along the edge of our yard. There were three of them. Whispering pines was the name we gave them. I would make my bedroom under the biggest tree. The doorway to my house was a space between two of them. And the kitchen and living room were under the other two trees. I piled up pine needles to make my bed. I hung my cup on the branch of the kitchen tree. I would crawl around under those trees for hours. I would bring a book and a blanket sometimes.

My sister and I would take our rakes and make a little town in the yard. We would have roads that connected to each other. We rode our bikes up and down those roads that we had created by raking paths in the leaves. We would "go to work" and then come back to our houses to have dinner and sleep through the night. Waking up again only minutes later we would make breakfast and tidy our houses and then back to the bikes and our busy work days.

My sister's house was under the grape arbor. Her house was bigger and sturdier than mine. But she was bigger and that made sense. Sometimes we would go "visiting" and ride our bikes to the other ones house. They were only yards apart but in our world you needed to ride on the roads to get between them.

I don't know why I remembered this today, but I am finding myself missing my house in the pines. I liked it when I was laying there and the wind moved the pine needles and they whispered. And I liked it that my sister would play with me. It was nice growing up with a playmate. That yard is the same one that we used to play softball in. We would pratice hitting there. There were three big trees on the top of the bank at the end of the yard. My dad put up a fence of chicken wire connecting the trees and filling in the open space between them so that our balls wouldn't go into the road.  The chicken wire is gone now. The kids that live there now don't play in that yard so much. But it is a magical place and I hope they find that magic.