Return to Me (32 page)

Whether I ended up at Columbia or the University of Washington or another college next year, I would be embarking on my own adventure away from home. And afterward there would be graduate school and global travels, where I’d collect ideas for new sanctuaries.

So as Reid threw himself back into his story, I quietly worked the key to the treehouse off my key ring. Despite my stealth when I slid the key beside his hand for him to find later, Reid glanced up at me. “What?”

“You are the keeper of the treehouse now, Reidster,” I declared as majestically as any oracle could. Just as I had promised my mother that she would always have a home here, I wanted Reid to know he would always have a private space of his own here, too. “And forever.”

“Really?”

“Really. Just remember, I want to be super tall in your book or game or whatever you’re creating. And I want to wear motorcycle boots. Because I am the Oracle of Delphi.”

Awed, he asked, “How did you know?”

“I just did.”

That night, I woke at three, knowing precisely that I had to write to Sam Stone and tell him that his one question had transformed my life.

“Do you always do what everyone tells you to do?” he had asked me in his ice cavern of a corner office, hawk eyes probing me.

The truth was: I had.

Sitting up on my air mattress, my blanket falling to my side, I thought about how I had repressed my own dream of building treehouses. In my heart I had always yearned to design skyscapes, not skyscrapers. Now I leaned over to grab my computer from the floor and powered it on. For a moment I sat before the blank screen, fingers poised over my keyboard. I closed my eyes and welcomed the rush of my lifelong love for small spaces to fill me.

Then I wrote.

Dear Mr. Stone,

If a moment can change a life, then the fifteen minutes with you rearranged me.

You were right.

I have been a “me too–yes, sir–whatever you want” girl my entire life. My decision to go to Columbia was made to please my dad. So was my so-called career aspiration to create corporate offices.

I love intimate spaces, whether treehouses or urban fills or small rooms within large homes. You said in your book that your mission is to create buildings that fill people’s spirits. I share that, but in a different way. Creating sanctuaries where people can refuel and recharge—that is my architectural vision and mission.

And that is why I’ve decided to do something radical because it is time for me to do more than think for myself, but to develop my own creative palette. I am taking a gap year to define what I like in architecture and what, specifically, I want to build. I intend to be as precise and intentional as you are with the buildings you choose to create.

Fired with passion, I wrote about how I believed tiny homes were the answer to conserving resources and creating community. Based on my interviews with Sybille and Peter, I was committed to custom-designing more than treehouses, but an entire sanctuary of them. My fingers flew as I typed, putting words to my vision. Each treehouse would be highly crafted, completely unique. And every last one of them would exude the safety of home and the healing power of sacred space.

Done, I set my computer back on the floor and walked to my window to ponder my words one last time before I sent them. Sam wasn’t the only person I had to tell. There was my father. And, in the future, the skeptics. Not everyone would love or respect what I created. Not everyone would approve of my small scope. My father had made his opinion about my tiny aperture quite clear. But these treasure-box spaces, these love nests, would be world-significant to the ones who needed them.
All I had to do was remember Reid’s delight as he clutched the key to his adopted treehouse.

Wouldn’t my clients’ pleasure be what truly mattered?

And wasn’t it my personal responsibility to craft a life where my passion merged with my power?

The Oracle of my life had spoken, the words wise and true.

I would tell Dad soon.

Maybe that was all we had to do: listen to our inner voice, the one that warns us when we’re on the verge of a bad decision, the one that encourages us to jump even when we’re shaking, the one that says open your lips and let the truth soar where it will.

I made my way back to my computer, settled it on my lap, and added one final note to Sam Stone direct from my heart:
Thank you for prodding me past my fears.

B
ouquets of cheery balloons festooned the white columns flanking my uncle’s house, where Dad was spending the weekend with us, his first in Seattle since we’d been back. It was Labor Day weekend, and Dad was determined to celebrate my uncle Adam’s birthday with overly bright fanfare, as if to signal to Reid and me that we were still his family despite the impending divorce. I appreciated that gesture. Most of all, I appreciated Dad’s committing to visit us at least once a month while he resided on the East Coast. So did Reid. As soon as Mom parked in the long driveway, my brother flew out of the car, leaving his overnight bag in the backseat with me.

“Reid!” Mom called, but he was already ringing the doorbell. Slumping back in the driver’s seat, she sighed. “I didn’t even get to say good-bye.”

“It’s better for him to feel comfortable here, Babycakes,”
Grandma Stesha said. She had insisted on accompanying us, even though it was a three-hour round-trip commute from the island to Seattle and back. I was glad for that. It hurt to imagine Mom making the trek home by herself.

The massive front door opened, and Dad was there on the wide porch, hugging Reid close to him. Another barnacle of resentment sheared off me; I could see and feel Dad’s love for us.

“Okay,” Mom said. She nodded resolutely at me in the rearview mirror. “Good luck talking to your father. Are you sure you don’t want me with you?”

“I’m sure,” I said. I didn’t need Mom to be my messenger or my henchman. What Dad needed to know, I would tell him myself.

Despite her death grip on the steering wheel, as if she were physically restraining herself from following me, Mom nodded. I noticed she didn’t drive away, though, but waited in the driveway. I appreciated the safety net of her presence, too, because as I walked toward Dad, my emotions clustered in a messy knot of anger, disillusionment, resignation, and gladness. Where before I might have drowned in these conflicting emotions, now I knew them for what they were: the mile markers to healing and forgiveness.

Unlike Dad, who had preemptively ended his marriage without giving Mom a second chance, I planned to remain through the weekend and all the other ones when he was in town, despite any confusion I felt. I would stay not just because he was my father. Not just because I didn’t want to become one of those bitter people who were desiccated with blame. Not just
because I refused to drown in the pain of his past actions. I would stay because I loved him. So Dad was right in a way he had never intended: Some relationships truly are worth the effort, regardless of how difficult they are.

“Guess what? I figured out how to pay for your college,” Dad said, beaming at me. So thrilled to share his solution, we stayed on the front porch. “You’ll be able to go to Columbia, where you want, no worries at all.”

“How?” I asked, as excited as Dad, lulled for a moment back to his vision for my life.

“You can work at Muir and Sons.” He looked at me expectantly when I stared at him, speechless. Unable to continue meeting his eyes, I slid my gaze to the Ionic columns with their opulent scrolls flanking the front door. Our gargantuan Grecian temple in New Jersey dwarfed my uncle’s. Dad continued, “My brother said you could work as an office assistant every summer, Christmas vacation, and spring break, and then our mother will cover the cost of college.”

How easy would it be to capitulate with that succulent carrot of full college tuition dangling before me? Just work at the family business, the very business that Dad had done everything he could to escape—moving us first to Lewis Island, then to Manhattan—so he wouldn’t be under the thumb of his mother, wouldn’t be compared to his rock star of an older brother.

What would be the price of that?

My body answered for me as I listened to the Columbia-to-career lullaby Dad had crooned to me since I was little. My lungs collapsed the way they had the one time I stepped into Stone Architects, starved of oxygen and life and creative force. My heart felt dehydrated. And my legs? They refused to move.

Just a few weeks ago, fear had immobilized me—fear that Mom, Reid, and I would have nothing, fear that we’d never be loved again. And most of all, fear that I would lose Dad forever. But consider all that we had gained: a new life filled with grandparents, a relationship with Jackson that I cherished, and a purpose that resonated with my soul.

My fingers closed over the quartz of enduring love laced to the leather bracelet, the one from Jackson to remind me that I was tough and soulful, strong and feminine, analytical and intuitive all at once. I was neither my father’s buttoned-up Rebecca nor my mother’s little-girl Reb.

Instead, I was Rebel with a cause. And my cause was to nurture my vision, to architect my life, to create a sanctuary that would provide solace for others.

No way was I giving up my gap year, not when I had five pallets of history-enriched stones to install in a week. And travels to a Peruvian medicine man in April and a Scottish fairy castle in June with my grandmother. Then I had grant proposals to research and write for Peter. A pitch I was delivering tomorrow to shadow the treehouse builder on my weekends. A business plan for the treehouse sanctuary Mom and I were committed to develop together by New Year’s Day. And a couple of astronomy courses Jackson and I were looking forward to listen to on road
trips to forage for dilapidated barns. And all throughout this year, I had biweekly lunches scheduled with my new mentor and friend, Sybille.

This is what women do when they defend their dream.

They pick their way through their own sharp-edged doubts and swim through the sea of skepticism. They remember that nothing and no one can turn them into powerless victims—not reneged vows, not betrayals that have ricocheted them from one end of the country to the other.

This is what women do.

They speak.

“Dad,” I said firmly, “we need to talk.”

Startled, Dad stared at me before dropping his eyes. With a hot flash of intuition, I realized that my father might be as scared that I would abandon him as I was of him leaving me forever. Cut off all ties—no more treehouse campouts over the summer, no more holidays, no more conversations.

I empathized. Wasn’t that what had worried me all along?

But as Sybille had said, why choose? Why did abandonment have to be the only path to get what we wanted?

“Dad, I appreciate that you want me to go to Columbia, and I appreciate that you’re working hard to figure out how to pay for college.” Echoing my brother when he advocated for himself, I said, “But Columbia is your dream, not mine.”

“Your mother—”

“No, Dad,” I said, refusing to let him blame Mom yet again. I stepped away from my role as his accomplice, pitting us, the dynamic duo of fun and games, against Mom, the dour disciplinarian. “Columbia is your alma mater, not hers. But I’m not going to Columbia.” I stared Dad down, daring any further challenge on that point. I received none. “And second, I know what I’m doing with my gap year. I’m traveling with Grandma for part of the time, and—”