Today for Throwback Thursday I’m reposting a story I wrote several years ago about one of my favorite childhood memories.
When I was younger, I used to live with my grandparents. Every year on the first of June my parents would drive me to their house in Tennessee and every year I stayed until the day before school started in September.
This began the year that I turned five. My baby sister was desperately ill, in the hospital for weeks on end, my mother sleeping in a cot next to her and my father working overtime to pay for that extended hospital visit. This turn of events was horrid for me, as I worried a lot and was also painfully shy for a five years old and so I despised the day care center I was forced to frequent. So when my grandparents offered to take me for a few weeks, I put on my sweetest face and most charming disposition and then stayed the entire summer.
And every summer there after.
Most of my favorite memories are from my childhood summers at my grandparents house. One of my fondest memories is of the apple tree that stood in the backyard. My grandparents had a lot of fruit trees: pears, apples, plums. But the apple tree had the perfect nook among its branches to sit and read while munching on a freshly picked apple. I spent hours upon hours in the apple tree, especially during that time when I was obsessed with The Little Mermaid and decidedly thought the apple tree made the perfect underwater castle for me to sing in (much to all of the neighbor’s chagrin, I’m sure.)
One Fourth of July weekend my mother, father and sister came to stay, along with my aunt, uncle and all of my cousins. There were four of us kids total and that weekend we went to the theater and watched Cool Runnings. From that moment on, we were obsessed.
With bobsledding.
We determined that we would all be bobsledders, no small feat in the southern summer heat. But if some guys in Jamaica could do it, surely we could too. All we lacked was, well, a bobsled.
So we fashioned our own version of a bobsled out of an old sheet. We tied it to the branches of the apple tree so that it made a sort of hammock, hanging about 8 feet above the ground. Then all four of us would climb quickly inside, mimicking the movie, and we would lean back and forth in a synchronized motion that would get the “bobsled” rocking at a fantastic speed. All the while yelling “ Jamaica ’s got a bobsled team, YAH!”
And then when we were finished, we’d climb out of the “bobsled” and bop one another on the head.
We did this every single day that week, except for the day that it rained. We played our own version of Ninja Turtles in the garage that
day.
(I was April.)
(I was always April, because I was the oldest and also a little bit bossy.)
The next day we anxiously waited about all morning for the sheet to dry out, so that we could resume the bobsled game. It was, after all, the best game that we’d invented so far in our entire childhood. Finally the sheet was almost dry, dry enough for a bunch of impatient professional bobsledders anyhow, and so we jumped in and started rocking. One, two, three rocks and then RIP!
The sheet ripped straight down the middle, sending the four of us tumbling out of the bottom of the makeshift bobsled and eight feet to the ground below.
We landed in a tangle on top of each other, shrieking and a bit dazed. Then we brushed ourselves off and without a word, we untied the shreds of the sheet still tied to the old apple tree and soberly threw it away.
We never tried to revive the game. It was too completely perfect while it lasted, and I think we recognized that, even as young as we were. There was a finality to it that we all agreed upon, although unspoken. We invented many more games, but none remain in my memory as vividly as that one. I think we must all remember it fondly, as sometimes now in our twenties someone will randomly blurt out “ Jamaica has a bobsled team, YAH!” and we all dissolve into giggles.
I live in the same town now that my grandparents used to live in. I decided to drive by their old house, the place where most of my best
childhood memories take place. Everything looks different when you’re older, I know. But one thing was markedly different. The old apple tree, it was gone.
I wonder if they knew. I wonder if they knew when they cut it down how much it used to mean to a shy little girl. I wonder if they heard
the echoes of laughter of a generation of kids who climbed its branches and invented the most perfect game. I wonder if they knew anyone would mourn its loss.
Probably not.
But it broke my heart anyhow.
–I’m linking up today with The Mom Creative for Throwback Thursday Stories –
