Woman’s childhood sanctuary threatened as parents plan to replace treehouse with hot tub. + UPDATE
"My (23f) parents (50s) are tearing down my tree house to install a hot tub and gazebo. I know this sounds so childish but I'm devastated. It was my sanctuary from their constant fighting. How do I deal or convince them not to?"
jannyjenes
First of all thanks for reading, secondly let me apologize for the nature of this post. I know people have real problems out there and mine isn't one of them but this is deeply affecting me.
So background on my childhood, my parents ran a business together and constantly fought. I mean constantly, the fights would sometimes devolve into physical altercations that were terrifying to me.
I was an only child so I think I'm the only person in the world besides them who knows how bad it actually got. To the outside world, we were a very normal family. When I was 6, my grandpa asked me what I wanted most for my birthday. Even then I knew I wanted to escape so I said a treehouse.
I helped my grandpa with every single nail in that place and it became my literal sanctuary when there was utter chaos in my house. I was in there when it was 100 degrees outside, I was in there when it was below freezing.
I painted it every year, I decorated it, I treated it like it was almost a religious retreat for me. I came home every summer from college and cleaned, painted and even slept in it most of the time.
I permanently moved out about a year ago but I also had fantasies that I could someday introduce my kids to my tree house someday. In my ultimate pie in the sky dreams, I thought about taking it apart board by board and reassembling it in my own yard.
Yesterday I got an email from my mom that almost as a footnote, she said very casually "oh me and your father are tearing out that old oak tree with your ugly treehouse and finally putting in a gazebo with a hot tub! Aren't you excited for us?"
My parents always denied how much they scared me when they fought, they also flat out deny that the fights got as bad as they did. Or they say that since they found Christ, the fights and altercations have been "forgiven" and I should forgive them too.
But I just can't forget and now threatening to tear down my special space seems like the ultimate admission that they either don't know or just don't care how much they tormented me with their constant battles.
I'm crushed over this. Apparently its coming down Saturday and I just can't get home to do anything about it. I asked politely if they could try to please save the pieces and my mom said "we're hiring laborers, I just don't think they'll care enough to try." Thanks a lot mom.
What can I do here? I'm so crushed. Is this just a part of growing up and being an adult that I have to deal with? Should I pay over $1200 for a last minute ticket tomorrow and try to save as much as I can?
Here were the top rated comments from readers in response to the OP's initial post:
GreenAtWork
While this is a very good and nice post I feel you totally left out what to do with his current relationship with parents. I mean yeah, clinging to an old tree house isn't good, but...
His parents still deny the abuse, they absolutely don't understand what the tree house meant to OP, they even went as far as calling it ugly. I mean that response about laborers not caring when the parents are the ones who should care must have really stung. I don't think I could maintain relationship like that.
Dolomite808
Do you have any friends in the area that could go pick up some of the pieces? I think re-using the wood to make a coffee table or something like that could be really cool if you could pull off something like that.
Not_a_Leaf
Like all things. You grieve and get past it. The truth is your treehouse died a long time ago. While at one point it was a sanctuary that stopped being true long before it was torn down. Things change and they’ll never go back, it’s the sad truth of growing up
Three days later, the OP returned with an update.
jannyjenes
So end story is I called my mom to please take several pictures of the treehouse for me, from several angles and inside. She was so rude and dismissive and said something along the lines of "oh, Jenny we don't have time for that and you can't expect us to climb up into that piece of junk?" I was heartbroken all over again because she was callous.
I decided that the only way I was going to have any keepsakes was to fly home and either take pictures myself or save as much of the wood as I could. I bought a really expensive last minute ticket home.
After I'd already paid the ticket, I remembered that my maybe my neighbor would be willing to take some pictures for me. They are an elderly couple but they had almost been like surrogate grandparents (when they were home, they travelled a lot) but Mr "Smith" prided himself on being in great shape so I figured it couldn't hurt to ask him for pictures just in case I didn't make it home in time.
To say it was an odd conversation is an understatement, I'll just type it out to the best of my memory:
Me: "Hi Mrs Smith, it's Jenny from next door are you guys in town by chance?"
Mrs Smith: "Jenny! It's so good to hear from you. No we are at our place in XXXXX. Is there something I can do for you? Is everything ok?"
Me: "well not really, my parents are tearing down the oak tree with my..."
Mrs Smith: "what? they are doing what?"
Me: "they are tearing down that oak tree with my treehouse."
Mrs Smith "no, they can't do that. That's our oak tree."
Me: "well I think either Friday or Saturday, they are having people over to cut it all down."
Mrs Smith: "Jenny, I need to make some calls. I'm sorry I need to let you go. I'll try to call you back."
So I flew home early Friday morning. My parents had hired some laborers from home depot but weren't home. They were well underway tearing my treehouse down. I approached them and asked if I could pay them to set aside the boards and metal parts and not throw them in the dumpster they had brought, they agreed.
And I was able to save almost all the wood in a very neat pile. I even tried to number everything so if I ever do get to rebuild it someday, I know what goes together. It wasn't ideal but I feel fortunate that I did get to save most everything.
I'd say at maybe 6pm my parents finally showed up and they were as mad as I've ever seen them. They weren't even happy to see me. What it turns out, the neighbors had their lawyer issue an injunction against tearing the tree down.
I can't even begin to say how angry my parents were. And they didn't even really speak to me to tell me what was going on so I called Mr and Mrs Smith back. It took until Saturday but finally they called and they told me that basically there had been a surveying mistake when my parents had built their house in the 80s and the tree had actually been on the Smith's property the whole time.
They told me they always had an uneasy peace with my parents over the error and had never minded having a treehouse in the tree but chopping it down was crossing a major line.
They said the tree gave them great shade in the summer mornings and they could not imagine tearing it down for any reason. They asked me what my parents reasons were and I told him about the gazebo and he literally started laughing that my parents had the nerve to knowingly build a gazebo on their property.
He said he'd always planned on legally deeding the property over to my parents since it's only about a 11 foot error (along the entire property) but since he thinks my parents purposefully waited until he and Mrs Smith were out of town to rip down the tree, he wasn't in any mood to do them favors.
Saturday was so awkward and I spent the night at a friends from HS. This morning my dad said he wanted my "Crap" off his property so I called the Smiths back and they said they didn't mind if I stored my wood in their barn as long as I needed.
My parents went to Church and I plan on leaving without saying goodbye. I had some memorabilia boxes in the attic, I am taking them to a friends house and she's going to ship them too me so there's nothing left in the house for my parents to take their anger out on.
I don't know how this will affect our relationship but the reality is we haven't had much of one for a long time. I don't have any attachment to my childhood home any more so at least in the near term there's nothing for me to really go home to.
thank you everyone for the advice and giving me some clarity during a really stressful time. I didn't follow most advice but I did take a little bit from all 100+ responses to work out a decent solution. Thank you again.
Here were the top rated comments from readers in response to the OP's post:
Cindibot9000
Obviously, only my opinion, but, consider letting the tree house wood go. That house served it's purpose and was a refugee for you at the time, but sometimes things that were once useful can end up weighing us down.
Maybe a sliver or a small piece to make a necklace from? I understand the desire to keep it. I also know that the strength and refuge that it provided is now inside of you, and has been all along.
chevronbird
I will never jeopardize the beans.
Omg, surprise tree law!!!
DrRocknRolla
If OP's parents are like this now, I can't imagine what they were like when she was growing up. She could build Fort Knox and it wouldn't matter, probably.
peter095837
Sometimes I just want to shake the shoulders of these kind of parents. Like Bro, what in the world is wrong with these people?
tayroarsmash
All she had to do was take some pictures and this wouldn’t have happened. They’d have a whole other legal issue on their hands but the tree would be gone.