In an attempt to balance out the rather depressing recount of Prom, I'll continue with something rather happier, a childhood memory. When I was young, my daddy built me a tree house in the branches of the oak tree in our back yard. Even though it is located in the lowest branches, it is still quite some distance from the ground and I recall my mother being anxious about letting me climb the tree to get into the house. Daddy, however, had no such qualms; he trusted my ability and my common sense to be prudent when climbing. He was right to trust. Never once did I slip and fall, in all my years of going up and down. That is not say of course, that I will not in the future continue to be so lucky, but I believe it is significant that I have not yet had that misfortune.
The tree house became my personal hideout, the place I spent more time in than any other. There was nothing I enjoyed more than rushing home after school, flinging my schoolbag aside, hurriedly changing out of my uniform and then dashing to the tree house to settle down with a book for the rest of the afternoon. When daddy saw how much I loved the place, he hired an electrician to extend the power lines to the tree and paid him to install a light. It was the best thing he could possibly have done, as it meant I no longer had to leave once it got dark and often I would lie curled on the bean bag with my book, reading until well after night had fallen. Those days are the best memories I have.
The tree house was my personal space, more so than even my bedroom. In my mind, my bedroom was synonymous with sleep and homework and noise, whereas the tree house was equated to pleasure and privacy. It was my safe haven and in fact, still is. Often you may find me sitting up there amongst the leaves, reading away, or with my laptop, typing up some journey from within the well of my imagination.
I remember one spring, the air was crisp and fresh and I'd been sitting in the tree house, when a fantastic suggestion floated up through my brain and washed over all my other thoughts, like a gentle wave against the shore. I voiced this suggestion to daddy and Papa Fabray, my father's father, excited and full of exuberance:
"Daddy, I just had an idea! What if the tree house had a balcony? And then it would be like a proper house!"
"Well, isn't that quite the idea," I remember him remarking, looking at me as though he was seeing me for the first time.
And the next day, the two of them were outside, hammers and nails in hand, constructing a balcony for the tree house. It ran around two sides of the house and rested atop several of the branches which twisted away from the oak's thick trunk. That summer, despite his many reservations about it, daddy and I had installed a hammock on that brand new balcony, and most days were spent lying about, staring at the impossibly blue sky through the canopy of leaves, soaking in the dappled light which filtered down through the branches. My vehement assurances that I would not fall out of the hammock, "daddy, daddy, I won't, I promise!" thankfully had not fallen on deaf ears.
I recount these things to you, dear reader, because I believe someone's favourite place in the world reveals a lot about them. Now, the tree house is a symbol for my childhood, my innocence; my lost days. It was where I was most unabashedly myself. It's the only place, apart from this journal, where I was unafraid to just be who I was, without obligations to conform to society's ideals.
My sister, Frannie, was welcome in the house, but she preferred her bedroom, where she would talk on the phone for hours, or over the Internet with friends. She came up a few times, but mostly, she avoided the tree house. So we all came to see it as my space, the place you would find me when I was nowhere else to be found. One day, Frannie even presented me with a plaque which she'd made and painted herself.
"This is for you," she'd said, handing me a small rectangular package, crudely, but effectively wrapped, even if it was with far more tape than was necessary. I'd unwrapped it to find the cute little sign. It said "Quinnie's Tree House." It still hangs over the front door, weathered and askew, but I've never been compelled to take it down, or even straighten it. Its crookedness lends a personality to the house.
The only person who ever came into the house was daddy. He and I would spend hours talking about the latest book I was reading; he made suggestions for things I might like and promised, in turn, that he would read the books I asked him to. Conversations followed in the vein of:
"Of course I'll read Harry Potter, but only if you promise your old dad that you'll read Stephen King when you're older."
"I will! I will!" I used to faithfully promise, nodding my head and grinning from ear to ear. I'd made a list of things I had to read, as promised to daddy. I've still not gotten more than halfway through that list. In fairness, I did make an attempt at reading Stephen King, but didn't find it as appealing as dad had made it sound and an urge to read any more of his novels was put on hold while I continued my own reading.
Books, dear reader, were a huge part of my childhood, my early adolescent years, and even today, I do not pass more than a single day without at least continuing one chapter further of the novel I am currently reading. Books are a treasure trove to me, a bottomless well of adventure and imagination, escapism and inspiration. They have been better friends to me over the years than people. When I had no one else to turn to, I turned to my books. They took my mind off the things which tainted my days and in turn, imbibed me with wisdom and knowledge and a thirst for greater things.
If we are being honest, I cannot think of the tree house without recalling books and the days I spent reading. Every side of the small space is lined with shelves, except for a niche in the back left corner, left as a place for me to sit while I read. Not all the shelves are full. They will, of course, fill eventually, but I am careful about which novels I choose to place there. I wish to own only the ones which mean something to me.
I am also very particular about how they are ordered; I follow a system as meticulously as a librarian might. From left to right, the shelves represent a timeline of my life through books. In the far left there are my first picture books, followed by the picture book version of the Disney classic cartoons, of which I'm certain I have the entire collection, and on the top shelf, to the very left, is the very first book in my little library: my battered and worn version of the Holy Bible. It holds the most significant position on my shelf, just as it holds a significant position in my heart.
I shall never escape my Christian upbringing; it is as much a part of me as the creases in my skin and the stories within its pages are to me what fairytales are like to other people. That is not to say, of course, that I have never strayed from the proverbial straight and narrow path, because all too often, I have. It is just that religion will be as important to me as breathing; deeply significant, and essential to living, but not thought about all the time. As I see it, we all have our moments of weakness, do we not, and we cannot spend our lives trying to be perfect. I'm certain you too, dear reader, have broken from your religion sometime in your past. And I guarantee that you most likely will again. Human beings, by nature, are terrible at always obeying rules and conventions. For the most part, this is frowned upon, but if you spare a moment to consider, you would realise that without breaking convention, the human race would not have progressed as far as it has. We would still be riding around on horses on dirt roads and living in one room shacks made of mud bricks. Breaking rules is one of the keys to innovation. Anyhow, the point I was trying to convey is that there are certain things you can never leave behind. For me, religion is one of them; another is the memory of that tree house.
Perhaps one day I'll find someone I trust enough to invite up into it. So far, there has been no one. And now that my parents are divorced, and my sister is off at college, there is no one apart from myself in this house who has ever been inside the tree house. Mom could never muster the courage to climb the tree when it was first built, and now, as a sign of respect for me and my privacy, will not try. I'm grateful to her for that; there are too many memories which linger there, and I'm almost afraid that her presence would disturb them, stirring them up and erasing them like a layer of dust.
I know I have spent pages of this journal talking about this tree house, because that's where I write today, and I wanted to convey to you how important it is to me. There are few people I have considered bringing up here, and even fewer to whom I have even mentioned its existence. The first of the people I considered, but never brought up was Rachel Berry, all those years ago, when the house was new, the wood unweathered and unscarred and to a six year old mind, the prospect of sharing an intimate space with a new friend was exciting. But as I have already said, I never brought anyone up here. In fact, none of my closest friends are even aware of it. It feels like a private part of myself which should always be kept close; a secret which can only be revealed to the closest of friends. I almost fear that if I mention my tree house, I would have to then explain all the memories, and all the things which happened within its walls. I feel that the two go hand in hand and that to mention one would mean that I was obliged to tell of the other. I'm not ready to tell anyone in person of what went on there during my childhood, thus, I pen it here, to you, whom I have never met, and after everything I tell you and have told you, I pray to God to never meet. I can envision any possible meeting between us as such:
"Oh, you're that Quinn Fabray, the girl who likes reading, the one who didn't win Prom Queen, who was viciously attacked by a cat when she was six," you'd say and I would stand there in embarrassment, eyes searching your face for how much you really knew about me; whether you read this entire journal, or whether you stopped after the first few entries.
"And who are you?" I would probably ask, not really caring about that, and worrying more about how you could possibly know those things about me. My mind would start reasoning that you'd heard those things somewhere, that you didn't necessarily read this journal, that there were other ways you could know those things - wishful thinking.
"I read your journal! I found it just sitting there in the park so I picked it up and read it!" you'd reply, but of course, I'd already known this - despite trying to escape that conclusion, it was the only one my mind realised made sense. I'd probably be in a panic by now; my breaths would be coming shallower and faster, my heart would have picked up its pace as though it were a runaway train and my mind would be darting about, trying to determine the best escape route; or possibly considering the best way to kill you and get away with it. I don't think there are any lime pits in Lima…
I'm only joking, reader. I'm strange and sometimes insane, but I'm not homicidal. Trust me. Would I lie to you? And yes, as serious a style as I may have adopted within these pages, I actually do possess a sense of humour, even if an odd one.
But do you understand, my friend, what I have described? I wonder if you do. I hope you realise just how much I am revealing to you by even mentioning my tree house. Already, stranger, you know more about my life than my oldest friends. I do hope that you realise how much it takes out of me to pen this. Do you have a place like my tree house, reader? Do you understand where I am coming from? Did you ever trust anyone enough to let them in?
I weathered some of my darkest days in that house, as well as those days I think fondly of; but life isn't all summer time and warmth and now and again, winter seeped into my life and broke its storms over my head. This tree house has seen me through many more changes, many more personal times than anything and anyone else in my life. I intend to reveal those hardships to you, dear friend, thus my burning need to impress upon you my feelings about this tree house. I feel that if you understand how safe I felt there, compared to anywhere else in the world, then you will understand how much effort it is going to take me to be honest with you here. I'm doing more than merely penning a story here; I am also revealing a soul - the soul which none, other than my beloved tree house, have ever seen.
The first disaster my tree house and I faced together was the death of my grandmother, Nana Fabray. I was seven years old. Nana Fabray had been a light in my life; a woman whom I trusted wholeheartedly, and loved almost more than my own parents. She was the woman who ignited a passion for reading within me. Some of my earliest memories involve sitting on her lap and listening to her read Dr Seuss books to me. She had the perfect reading voice, imbuing the text with the richness of humanity and emotion that it lacked upon the pages. She taught me to read and one of my proudest moments was there at her knee, upon my first completion of out loud reading; I even still remember the book, so great a memory that it is: Dr Seuss' Oh, the Places You'll Go! which, incidentally, is still my favourite of his books.
"Listen love," Nana Fabray would say, referring to Oh, the Places You'll Go! "this here book tells you everything you ever need to know about life. Whenever you feel like you haven't any strength to continue, look to this book and it'll get you going again. Keep it beside you always as a reminder."
I have done so. I was young when she passed from this life, and that, I believe, spared me from the full feeling of loss, the one adults experience, but I was not totally unaffected. I was not yet old enough to feel that sense of hollowness, but old enough to understand that Nana had gone to a place from whence she would never return; I cried for days on end when I realised exactly what that meant, hiding in the tree house and not talking to anyone.
When Nana Fabray died, I read and reread and read again that little book, with its brilliant rhymes and zany illustrations, taking in its words and advice and all the while remembering Nana and sitting on her knee and all the reading I did there. Though my copy is worn and, some would say, sorry looking for all the times that I thumbed its pages, I prefer to say that it has been well loved, just like Nana Fabray. It is the same copy she gave me when I was a little girl and to part with it would feel like permanently parting from her. That's the reason I will not let anyone touch that book, nor let them replace it. Within its pages, Nana Fabray still exists and I cannot read the words without hearing them in her voice. That alone has kept me fighting at times. I do believe I inherited both my strength and my confidence from Nana Fabray. She, with the help of Dr Seuss' words, inspired me. And still continues to be an inspiration.
Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You're off to Great Places!
You're off and away!
Author's note/Disclaimer: The part in italics is the opening bit of Dr Seuss' "Oh, the Places You'll Go!" which obviously I don't own.