Years ago, a boy in the 8th grade built this tree house for his little sister. The sister and other neighborhood kids enjoyed it for a while, but kiddos grow and their needs change, so it sat neglected for a long time. For safety – and according to my husband, aesthetic – reasons it needed to come down. Trouble is, 8th grade boys use A LOT of nails. What we expected to be a 10 minute job took well over an hour.

I took Photo 1 after my husband and father-in-law pulled the support leg out from under the house. We expected the whole thing to fall immediately, but it laughed at us and stayed firmly in place.

About an hour passed between Photo 1 and Photo 2. There are no pictures during this time because it’s impossible to operate a camera when your face is buried deep into the crook of your arm. The men folk – an engineer and a carpenter – knew exactly what they were doing, but ladders and chainsaws don’t mix in my mind so I couldn’t watch any of it.

Finally, after what looked like a Cirque du Soleil show performed with power tools and denim pants (Okay, it didn’t really look like that I don’t think. But what would I know? My face was buried in my arm…) the tree house toppled.

I like connections to the past, so the downing of the tree house saddened my heart a bit. Then we started the process of removing all the @$%*ing nails from the 2’x4’s so my father-in-law could recycle the wood for a different project. That snapped me out of my funk pretty quickly.

At one point, I envisioned a new tree house in its place. Something for our friends’ children – or maybe grandchildren, one day – to play in. After all the work that went into taking this tree house down, I think the kiddos in our future will have to make-do with a tee-pee instead.