I step out the door and all I see is rocks, grape vines, a swing, railroad tiles and a small garden. My backyard is very small and has no grass, mainly because I'm allergic to fresh mowed grass. I sit on the swing and look at how the grape vines are growing above to make a beautiful arbor, this is my home... this is where my memories are. There are so many stories in this small patch of land that sits behind my house.
Next to the swing, you can still see the outline of where my fort used to be. The rocks here are pushed far down into the ground... funny thing is, that fort was made out of PBC pipes, and we took it down about six years ago. I would run to this fort when my mom and sister were fighting... didn't work well in the winter since my fort didn't have a roof, but it was someplace to go so I didn't hear the yelling and slamming of doors. I'd sit in this fort for hours just reading, writing or look at the clouds. I could have moved my fort, it was light enough, but sitting right there behind the shed... I felt hidden. When the fort was up, the swing wasn't. I guess it is a good switch...
I love that swing, though its torn up from birds taking the stuffing for their nest every spring. My mom keeps saying she'll sew it up, but she never gets around to it. Oh well, doesn't take the enjoyment of sitting on it out. Sitting here was my favorite place to be after a hard day of school, I usually didn't want to be inside right away because my mom would want me to talk to her... like a normal teen, I didn't want to, so I would just sit there and collect my thoughts before going inside. I'd try to find one good thing from the day to tell my mom. I never wanted to tell her bad things... she's worked too hard every day, I don't want to add to the exhaustion by telling her that someone took my lunch money or something along those lines.
My mom is the one that put those railroad tiles back here to create garden boxes. She also put all the dirt in them, and plants the garden. Other than the grape vines, this garden is the only green we have back here. I love the garden, even in the fall when everything is dead and we haven't harvested it yet... even when everything is all brown, I still see the story and hope that spring is just around the corner, the memory of everything being green will return and become life again.
This backyard, though it is small, holds a lot of my memories... a lot of my stories. These stories are willing to be told to the right people, they just have to look carefully and be willing to listen. Everything back here tells a story whether big or small. Even the deck tells the story of the weeks my mom and a family friend spent building it. The stains on the cement remind everyone that I splat painted a pair of jeans, and the dent in the side of the house tells the story of a fight my mom and sister had to where my sister swung open the gate so fast it hit the house and left this curve.
My backyard back home, in small town Central Point, Oregon, tells the stories of childhood and teens. You have to look closely but they are there, just waiting to be told to someone who has interest. Just waiting for someone to sit on the torn up swing that is being engulfed by the grapevines, and notice that there's a patch of rock pushed deep into the ground in the shape of a perfect rectangle. Right where my fort used to sit.
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