Show us a picture of what makes you cry
This is just a representative picture, not my actual treehouse. But yes, a treehouse made me cry.
See, I've been talking about wanting a treehouse - and Ellis said we could build one, over the summer. We sat down one night with Spike, and he drew up plans and we talked about all the kinda things we'd want in a treehouse. We planned out where to put it, too - in the big tree that's out at the edge of Ellis's property down in New Orleans. We talked about it and talked about it, and figured the best time to build it would be while I was down over the summer. So I was excited but you know, that kind of background excitement you get when you know you've got to wait a while for things.
I'm down in New Orleans with Ellis now - here to celebrate my birthday (I'm 21 today!), Valentine's Day, and Mardi Gras all wrapped up in one. Imagine my surprise when I woke up yesterday morning, and found Ellis had sometime during the night left a series of little notes for me, with clues on them - like a scavenger hunt. Each one had a bit of music trivia on it I had to solve to get to the next one. They led me all through the house, and to the back door- and there he'd taped a compass and another note. These clues had numerical answers, so many paces east and so forth. So I followed them and they led back to the big tree - under which was a strange plastic rock.
The plastic rock was concealing one last clue and a keypad. When I typed the right numbers in - a rope ladder came swinging down from high above. Thirty feet or so I must've climbed up- and I found myself in a treehouse! A very well camouflaged from the ground treehouse (I didn't even see it all the way up there!), a very well-constructed tree house, built by Ellis's own hands for my birthday. There's a big comfortable bench built around the tree trunk, with cushions to sit on and bookshelves underneath. There's arrow slots in floors and walls, and a zip line to get back to the house hastily if we need to - it's very defensible. And there's a tire swing that's got a hole you can lower it down through, and retract it back up into. There's a little fridge up there so I can have snacks, and a generator to run it and other electrical things we feel like bringing up.
There's a bed too, and on the bed was the last note - it just said 'Dear Val, happy birthday'. I must admit that I lay down on that bed and cried a while. Happy crying- which I didn't even know really happened. How can you cry when you're happy? Why, for that matter? But I did. I just lay right down and cried for a while, with the treehouse creaking around me and the breeze drifting in through the arrow slots. I never cried 'cause I was happy before, so it felt kinda weird be doing - but it wasn't like anyone else around to see or anything. Just me and the treehouse. My treehouse, what Ellis built for me with his own two hands - for my birthday.
I think I'm getting sniffly again right now.