The idea came first. I’ll turn it into a fort. The play set in my parents’ backyard was just too…open. I wanted a hiding place, something cozy, something small. I needed a roof and walls, so next came materials. I knew my mom wouldn’t want me dragging all of our blankets outside, so I made my way to my dad’s garage and grabbed the first big thing I could find: a royal blue tarp. I pulled the giant piece of plastic up and over the monkey bars and the double swings, over the ladder and the slide, over everything until the play set disappeared.
I tucked myself inside the blue-curtained walls and looked all around. Potential brimmed. Ideas felt endless. In the absence of everything, I could see it: the beginnings of anything. I spent an entire summer dressing up that fort, hanging hand-drawn pictures on the makeshift walls and (re)planting flowers I’d picked from my mom’s garden beds. It became a shelter for my favorite things. Things found, things saved, things given. Every now and then, I’d haul a basket filled with these treasures from my bedroom out to the fort. “For safekeeping,” I told myself.
That summer, if you’d have stepped inside (after stating the secret password, of course), you could have pieced together a picture of who I was, the things I loved, and the ways I was drawn to dream and create. That fort housed the well of my imagination, and it never ran dry.
I’ve been thinking a lot about that little fort since we decided to build a tree house for our youngest son, Crew. The longer I’ve been a parent, the more I’ve learned to try to pay attention to the natural bent of my kids’ curiosity. With Crew—that boy lives for the hunt of collecting things that interest him—what I’ve seen when he bounces out the back door is him burrowing in corners and pockets of our yard or crawling beneath one of our towering oak trees. And when Crew comes back inside, he isn’t telling grand tales of distant adventures. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out treasures no bigger than his palm. A flower, an acorn, a rock he’s convinced is a meteor. “Can you believe it, Mommy?” And I can’t. I can’t believe that out of everything, this is what Crew brings to me. But maybe I should. Because I once was drawn to small spaces and small things. I once burrowed when I could have roamed.
But then I got older, and the world lured me out. People, with the best of intentions, tell us it’s time to come out of our blue forts and our tree houses, out from beneath our green canopies. They tell us the world is our oyster. Even now, that phrase can still make me feel anxious and overwhelmed, a little like I wasn’t wired to dream big enough.
"I want to create safe havens for my kids—for their imaginations, their creativity. These are precious things, and I don’t believe we ever outgrow our need to nurture them."
As a little girl, I felt the same way. Going out only made me want to come back home. Even in my 20s when I lived in New York—a city that buzzes with opportunity and discovery—I spent most of my time inside cozy little shops no bigger than my mom’s dining room. But I always found them there: scents that inspired me, window displays that sparked my imagination. What would I do if I ever had a store of my own? I could spot a million things in those quiet, tiny spaces that made my heart sing.
It’s probably no big surprise that every creative space I’ve carved out for myself in my adult life is a mirror image of this sort of cocoon—small, cozy, moody—and it’s because I know what can happen when I bring the walls in. I dream. I create. In the absence of the world’s noise and influence, I am endlessly free, boundless in heart and spirit. No matter its shape or style or size, this is the place where I can be thoughtful and original, where my thoughts can settle and fall into flow, where my soul is given a break in pace. Here, I am clued in to the ordinary, awake to the wonder.
I couldn’t have understood it as a little girl when the idea landed with me, but taking up that royal blue tarp was an act of preservation. As a mom, I want to create safe havens for my kids—for their imaginations, their creativity. These are precious things, and I don’t believe we ever outgrow our need to nurture them.
We finished Crew’s tree house late last year. I didn’t fill the inside with much, as I know those walls are for him. And just as I anticipated, the place you’ll find Crew the most is hunkered inside on his knees, bent low to get a closer look at whatever ordinary, extraordinary, small treasure he’s found. Something he’ll leave there, for safekeeping.
I hope Crew will only ever leave that tree house when he’s good and ready—not because he’s been influenced to believe there’s bigger and better waiting somewhere else. I know the world deserves our attention, with its big questions and heaps of know-how. And I know there are times to go out, to weather the world, to seek answers and be a part of solutions. But there’s also a time to come back home, back to center, back to safety—to dream your dreams in the haven of a place you’ve known, and feel known.
Summer is coming. The season known for calling us up and out. I hope you’ll make space to run wild and roam free, and I hope you’ll feel the freedom to do just the opposite, to find a place where you can close the doors…and watch the unique way the world opens up for you.
