My heart swelled with a warmth only friendship and love could bring. Immediately, my mind flipped through a catalog of memories associated with that one word. When we were eleven, Carrie, Brayden, Tree, and I decided to build a tree house deep in the woods behind my house. Mom used to babysit them, so we were almost always together, playing outside my home. So one summer morning, all four of us sat at my kitchen table and designed it together. Naturally, there were squabbling between the girls and boys, like the boys wanted to build a pirate’s ship into the tree. And then, they started talking and acting like pirates, which was totally annoying. Carrie and I rolled our eyes and had told them if we didn’t build a house, then we weren’t building it at all. Finally, they’d agreed, and we went to work on the design. Brayden always wanted to be an architect and contractor, and I have to admit, even at the age of eleven, he was a genius. We told him what we wanted, and he drew it out.
