Before Daddy Cut it Down

the tire swing

It’s been four decades, yet the sounds of summer, the wind in my face, the weightless rising from earth with my face squinting toward the sun — I can see them like it was yesterday. The oak tree was massive. It was magical.

The sun bore down through the gnarl of branches with each rise of me, blinding me in the upswing. I closed my eyes against the brightness and sang louder.

Lucy in the skyyyy — with diiamonds Lucy in the skyyyy — with diiiamonds!

Somehow, if I could swing higher, I might see God, I thought.

My Daddy built an entire playground in our back yard. There was the sandbox; the gathering place for our neighborhood and for all five of us kids. He built a tree-house-like second level over the sandbox. This was where my brother jumped off not once, but twice. The first time was when Daddy was still building the second level. When my brother hit the ground he fell back onto his rear. He stood up screaming with a board nailed to his rear end. Another time he’d received a red Superman cape and thinking it would make him fly, he leapt from the top level and plummeted to the ground. He cried because he couldn’t fly.

Daddy also built a log structure that spiraled up like a fairy-tail staircase. He painted the top of each log a different color and wrapped a chain around it to hold the logs together. We climbed up those logs and claimed our status on top of the world. This also seemed to be the place for prisoners to be taken when we played “Cops n Robbers” or the politically incorrect and now defunct “Cowboys n Indians” game we played.

He put a bar between two trees and hung swings that captured my thoughts and swinging dreams as a little girl prone to fantasy.

Why don’t you climb inside my braids and sing me a song?

swinging out over the grasses our feet stretched so high the chain-link grinds as we rise toward sun

Why don’t you open up your freckles and let me inside?

I need to know where the June bugs hide in the winter when swings don’t swing and the night stands still

— Yesterdays by Christina Ward

Behind the playground my Daddy built for us was the tallest, biggest oak tree I think I have ever seen. Or, at least that is the way memory serves it. He hung up a tire swing. Life began for me with that tire swing. For a tiny child like me, gaining control over my movements, navigating the swing so I avoided hitting the fat trunk, and rising myself to bigger heights was intensely challenging.

But master it, I did. I sang and sang and sang.

I write often about my experiences in that back yard gathering fireflies and caterpillars, chasing my sister with Daddy-Long-Leg spiders, running through the grasses with Junebugs slapping me in the chest. But the tire swing I have only alluded to once in my writing.

— young forever, the moon on our cheeks, our toes in the cool damp sands where we bury our cars and run our water hoses. The sweet gray granite is still home-base, and you are still hiding behind the old oak, the one with the swinging tire, before Daddy cut it down. — Firefly Nights by Christina Ward

The tree eventually rotted and Daddy somehow managed to cut it down. He carved the stump into the shape of a throne.

I wish I could climb back through the years and resurrect that old tree, rehang that battered tire swing. I’d bring my two boys with me — when they were young and hungry for life, tackling each other and everything with giggles and dirt.

I’d take their hands and walk with them past the old rock my siblings and I called “home base,” past the rows of brick and rock next to the house where we captured toad after toad. I’d gather my children at the swing and take turns pushing each other. Wesley would do that thing where he’d laugh until the laughter was silent and tears just poured down his wide-open face. Alex would try to go the highest.

What songs would we sing?

Could I take my grandchildren there, too? Jason would laugh heartily and exclaim at every swing. FUN! FUN! Higher! Amara would giggle and pick the flowers from the yard, the sun gathering her hair in a shiny crown. And I’d push that swing until my arms just gave out with exhaustion.

Then, we’d catch fireflies and name them.

I wonder what happened to that old tire. Perhaps it is overgrown with honeysuckle or a persimmon tree, just inside the woods. I wonder if “monkeys” still sing in those woods. (They were actually mourning doves, but the boy down the street said they were monkeys. I believed him.)

That worn tire swing. Birthplace of memory. I’d give that to my children. My grandchildren. If only that magic were eternal.

The memories of it are so thick I think I can touch them. I hope the fireflies still swim in the air there.

This personal essay is a response to Michael Shook’s prompt:

Christina Ward 👻 is a poet and nature writer from North Carolina. Her work has been featured in a few online poetry journal blogs (Vita Brevis, Wolffe Poetry). She is currently submitting and seeking publication in literary journals, working on her first chapbook of poetry, and her first novel. You may follow her work or become a fan at Fiddleheads & Floss Poetry.