A Sudden Sweet Memory

K-3 i attended a private school in surrey, on the property of the school was a "forest". they had planted, landscaped and grown it in a certain way so that it was reasonably open and children could play within it. i remember running out to the forest with my friends on the first recess of the week and claiming an area as ours to build our fort and so we could play house there for the rest of the week. and every recess and every lunch we played house and built a fort out of stray logs and branches. my friends and i would look to each other before recess and lunch, with five minutes to the bell knowing that in five minutes we could run out of the classroom and play in that forest community that we built. fridays at lunch we would play out our last scene of house with a saddened impression, knowing that we would lose our spot by the end of school.

i was really young and in my memory that forest really scared me. i was afraid of what would pop out from under the bushes and sneak out from under a log, fall from a tree and jump out from behind a rock. but when ever i was really scared or was left alone for too long i would go to parts of the forest where the sunlight would shine down in rays to form irregular sun shapes on the forest floor, i would stand in that ray, and look up knowing that: i wasn't alone, and it wasn't really as dark as the forest illusioned it to be, the forest wasn't that tall and the sky was taller.