No Adults Allowed

In 2007, our next-door neighbor Frank built our son David a treehouse for his seventh birthday. David had talked to Frank for weeks about what he wanted, and Frank did his best to accommodate. Our small backyard didn’t quite allow for David’s grammar school dream of a slide that emptied directly into the above-ground pool - but Frank did manage to include a ladder leading up to a trap door, a climbing wall connecting to a secret side entrance, and enough interior space for a kid-sized table, chairs, and plenty of floor space for sleepovers.

We knew from the start that David and his friends would love it. That it would become their fort, their hideout, a safe place just out of earshot of the adults. That was the point. What we didn’t fully anticipate was the breadth of people who would climb those eight rungs, or the number of stories those wooden walls would hold over the years.

The first summer we had the Treehouse, we made a sign at one of those “do it yourself” shops at Navy Pier. David designed it to look like something you would see on a construction site, with a red emblem that said “Warning” and then in thick, black block letters: David’s Treehouse. No Adults Allowed.

We always meant to hang that sign on the front of the treehouse. But never got around to doing so. Instead, it sat in the corner of our kitchen window that overlooked our well used yard, anchored by that wooden structure, for the next two decades.

It wasn’t just the boys who used the treehouse. In the early days, there was an episode involving a neighbor who was watching our house while we were out of town - who apparently used the treehouse to “entertain” one of his female friends. Unfortunately, his girlfriend was not very happy when she climbed the ladder and found them!

Even Annie and I snuck up there a few times with friends - or just ourselves - a glass of wine in hand, the sound of the neighborhood at night below us. We wanted to make a few memories of our own before it became entirely off limits.

That was before seasons of tree and animal debris littered the floor, random decorations from summers past rusted in the corner, and the walls were covered in spray-painted initials and badly drawn body parts.

In hindsight, no matter which adults - or squirrel families - visited the hallowed interior, the treehouse always belonged to the boys. And to that end they seemed to think the rules we laid down were more like…guidelines.

No matter how many times we said no jumping out the side door, and no climbing on the roof, and for the love of God - no peeing out the side door, there was inevitably a moment: a THUD, the silence, and then Nick, feet first on the ground, claiming he had “fallen.” Or Daniel, insisting he had no idea how those footprints got up on the garage, And I don’t even want to think about how they rarely came in to use the bathroom (and how grateful I am for rain).

By high school the treehouse had evolved into something else, a place to escape adults - and sometimes reality - where more teenage activities would take place. While they believed it was all covert, and what happened in the treehouse stayed in the treehouse, what was actually going on was quite obvious to those of us on the ground.

David knew that we would never lie to another adult about what was taking place inside. So, whenever a parent pulled me aside at a school event to share the rumors of what they’d heard took place in our yard, I’d have to gently break the news: if your kid climbed the ladder, they were part of it. And whenever a parent said “oh, my kid would never,” I would smile and say, “hmmm...” fully knowing that - yes. Yes, they did.

And yet. For all the shenanigans - including learning just yesterday that on David’s 16th birthday they fit over a dozen people into a structure built for six - they kept it together. Every time. Two decades, hundreds of kids inside and out, and not one phone call we didn’t want to get. Not one moment we had to walk across that yard and shut it down for good. Whatever unspoken code existed up in those rafters, they honored it. Stay inside. Keep it together. Look out for each other.

The treehouse survived far longer than we expected. Nineteen Chicago winters, a handful of tornadoes, and us going from parents of a young family to empty nesters. Over the years, that kids table remained in the center and at some point the tradition became to write your name on it. Looking at those scribbles along that plastic top was like looking at a weathered map through our family’s past. There were names of kids I saw just this past week to ones I had not seen since the days of little league.

There was Declan who spent so much time with us the year after his Mom died. The Owens who were high school regulars. And even a past girlfriend or two - all who have faded into distant memories since David has been with his serious girlfriend Grace for the past four years.

I guess the only thing David did not do in the treehouse was spend a full night inside. Every year on his birthday, he and his two best friends, Ben and Harry said they were going to do it and each year – just after midnight - I would hear them hustle back into the warmth - and spider and mosquito l free - peace of our basement.

This past weekend I watched David those same two friends - Ben and Harry, the guys who would have been co-owners had we ever set up a treehouse co-op - take it down. From a distance, there was something almost feral about it - the way they each were as seven-year-olds - attacking it with plastic axes and pure destruction. But when I looked more closely, these were grown men. Real axes. And they were careful. Methodical. Handing pieces down to each other, stacking the wood like it mattered. Until all that was left was a pile in the corner.

That treehouse was a sacred space for so many. It was a part of David’s life through grammar school to college graduation. It withstood a pandemic, and its time to come down coincided with David now being one of those adults who were no longer allowed. He and his friends are all old enough to do whatever they want inside our house, or their own apartments, like normal people!

After the dismantling - the boys - the men – sat around the yard for a bit before saying their goodbyes and headed to their respective homes. Annie and I stood alone outside assessing the now empty space. Ann went inside and got the sign from the kitchen window. The one designed when David was seven, that we had always meant to hang and never did. The red emblem. The thick black letters still as clear as when we made it. Warning. David’s Treehouse. No Adults Allowed. Then, she carried it outside and placed it against the pile of wood.