The playhouse

My parents could never afford to buy a boring, modular, pre-fabbed playhouse so this is the one dad designed. He and I built it together from salvaged materials, but it wasn't completely finished until long after I was too old to use it.

It had three plexiglass windows that opened, a stained glass window and a loft inside.

It sat unfinished in our back yard for a long time. The older I got, the slower the construction began to be. The door was installed when I was 6, the windows when I was 8, the interior was renovated when I was 9. There were plans for a table inside but it never happened.

I don't remember playing with it a lot. I was never much of a girl. I tried to grow carrots in the lawn in front of it one year but it didn't work.

People used to approach me when I was in the back yard to ask me if it was for sale. I never kept track of the hundreds of dollars I was offered for it because I never considered getting rid of it.

The gingerbread trim was a late addition. All of a sudden there was one last push to finish it. Shortly after I learned that it had been traded for a new transmission in the van, and with that it was gone. Something about that hurt - maybe that it was never actually completed for me. But then again, I was 17 and we had to move so it was probably for the better.