Crayon House

We thought the kids were joking.
“Can we build a treehouse?” they said one afternoon, barefoot, sticky from popsicles, eyes full of some cartoon-inspired dream.
But then they brought out a sketch. Lopsided, crayon-colored, with hearts over the windows.
They looked at my husband and said,
“Can we do it with you, Daddy?”
And something in him cracked, gently. Quietly.
I saw it in the way he looked away too fast.
He took a breath, knelt down, and said,
“Then let’s get to work.”
What they didn’t know, and what he still barely says out loud, is that he never had one.
Not just a treehouse.
Not a tree, not a backyard, not a place that felt like it belonged to him.
He grew up in a children’s home. Transferred at 17 to a boarding program. No parents. No soft landing.
Only rules, cold hallways, and his own heart beating like, maybe one day.
So we built it together.
He measured. They painted. I planted flowers. The kids argued over fairy lights. He taught them how to drill without splitting the wood.
And when it was done, when we stepped back, hands splattered in white and yellow and laughter, he stood still for a long time.
Then he whispered:
“This is the childhood I didn’t have. And now I get to build it with them.”
And that’s when he almost cried. We all did.
Because this wasn’t just a playhouse.
It was healing. In wood. In light. In second chances.
We shared it in a builders’ group on the Tedooo app, where we have our craft store, and someone helped us design the flower boxes, and another sent us these handmade window handles shaped like little moons. I told them what it meant to us, and they just… got it. Like they’d built their childhoods too.
So here it is.
One house.

One tree.

One memory.
+1 to the joy jar.
+1 to the little boy who never had a backyard, and now stands under the stars, watching his kids run up the stairs of the home he gave them.
Not bad for a crayon sketch.

-unknown