Having packed the rest of the things from the house into the Uhaul trailer, I locked the garage door and looked at the house that had once been mine and Lynn’s. To be honest, I loved working on it. I had put seven years of blood sweat and whatever else into it. I had completely redone all three bedrooms. New Carpet, paint, and moldings. I had the crown molding for the master bedroom custom made for my wife. Lynn had drawn a pattern that she thought would look great. Honestly, I was a slave to my wife and loved her with every fiber of my being. Whatever she wanted, I got or built for her. I walked around to the side of the house and looked at the gate to the backyard. I closed my eyes and let my mind drift through the memories.

I would miss the back deck. I had planted trees around it to give it shade every time of the day. The recessed hot tub that I had worked 10 overtime shifts to buy was one of the best investments I could have ever made. Many times, the wife and I would sit in it wearing nothing, confident that no one would see us. She wouldn’t be sitting in a hot tub again anytime soon. The BBQ area had been a labor of love between my father and I. We had taken a week and built it together. Mom and Dad were frequent guests on the weekends. The wife’s mom was over just as much as mine were. It was nice to be surrounded by family.

I got into my truck and sorrowfully drive off. I would never see the master bathroom that had taken me 4 months to finish because of the wife breaking her fibula and tibia and not being able to walk without help for 8 weeks. That had been a great, but bad time for us. I relished every moment that I spent taking care of her. She however told me that I really got on her nerves hovering over her so much. I explained that it’s not hovering, its aggressive assistance. She was not amused in the least. Work wasn’t a big deal because the construction company I worked for ... I owned it. Other than the manager and a very few suppliers knew that I was the boss. I wanted it that way. Not because I didn’t trust my people or my foremen. I just preferred to get sweaty and dirty rather than sit in an office and answer calls all day.

I sat and thought about all the things that I would miss about the house. Chief among them would be the spacious backyard. My German shepherds used to run for hours out there. If there was wildlife out there, they would bark at it and try to play with it. Once there was a doe that had been grazing around the fenced area of the yard. Back and forth the doe and my dogs ran against the fence. It was a funny thing to see. If the dogs stopped some place, the deer did as well. If the deer stopped, the dogs stopped. They’d look at each other for a second or two and then take off again. This was an almost bi-weekly occurrence for about a month.

I drove past my neighbor and best friend Phillip (call me Schmidt) and his wife Patty’s house. Phillip told me that after he had been assigned to his unit in the Marine corps, there was another man in the squad with the same last name as his. So his squad leader told him that his name was now Schmidt and that he’d damn well better answer when that name was called. Phillip had gotten out of the Marines after he married Patty. He was a deputy US Marshall for the Atlanta fugitive recovery task force. Patty was a house wife and had given up her CPA job after their first son came into the world. She still did some (including ours) taxes around tax time. She also kept the books for a couple of long time clients she’d had with the firm she had worked at. I had helped Phillip rebuild the swing set for his kids when they were away at summer camp. We built two separate swing sets and put a commando rope line in between the two of them. Needless to say they loved sliding down the line to the sawdust pit we had put in. His daughter was a very cool kid. She came over one day when Phillip was over for the Penguins game, she whispered something to him and he nodded his head. She walked over to me and asked to talk to me for a moment. I paused the game so I could listen to her.

“You know that next month is my birthday right?” She asked me.

Yes I remember.” I replied.

“Well I talked to Daddy about this and we hashed it out and him and mom blessed off on it.” His daughter told me.

“What’s that Princess?” I asked her.

She looked at her father and he nodded his head. I could see a couple tears in his eyes. “I told them that I wanted a treehouse in the big oak tree in the backyard. But I don’t want a ladder, I want a rope climb to get into it.” She told me. “Daddy told me that I had to ask you to help build it because you knew how to build that sort of thing with safety in mind.

I was surprised a little bit. And asked her why a rope climb.

“Because it will help me build upper body strength and dexterity I need.” She said.

“Why, at 11 years old do you need that?” I asked.

She stood up straight and looked me in the eye. “Because I’m going to be a Marine just like my daddy is.” she told me with all the conviction she could muster. Both him and I were victims of the onion cutting ninjas that day, and I had all the equipment and wood in the backyard next weekend.