More Than One Way to Climb a Tree

At some point very early in childhood, after many Western Pennsylvania car rides where my brothers would point out a deer and I’d frustratingly say, “where?!” over and over again, unable to see what was supposedly very viewable, my parents took me to the eye doctor and I was diagnosed with what I can assume is scientifically called “awful vision.” 

I didn’t much mind needing to get glasses. It especially didn’t mind when I was able to pick them out and selected Rocket Power themed ones with skateboards that moved up and down on the temples. What I did mind is when the eye doctor told me that glasses are expensive and that they aren’t a toy and that I needed to be careful with them. “This means no roughhousing in them and no jumping or swinging upside or anything like that.” 

I’m sure this is just a generic thing they say. But to this day, I remember my stomach sinking in the optical as I found my outdoorsy childhood world shrinking before my newly corrected eyes. 

The next day, I was standing in front of “The Climbing Tree” with my next door neighbor in tears. We spent a lot of time in The Climbing Tree and the usual way we got up was by wrapping our legs around the lower branch, hanging upside down (something I was now explicitly warned against) and then swinging our bodies over into the tree. 

“We aren’t going to be able to climb trees together anymore,” I choked out. I’m a rule follower. The doctor told me not to go upside down in my glasses. This was the end of childhood as I knew it.

That’s when my neighbor told me to give him my glasses. (I was also told that because glasses aren’t a toy, I shouldn’t just give them to people but this felt like a more forgivable offense.) He told me that I could climb the tree with my eyes shut and that if he held them while I climbed into the tree, he could hand them back to me and then I wouldn’t be upside down anymore. 

It suddenly seemed too easy. We climbed the tree that way for about a week before I realized I absolutely could swing upside down in my glasses.

To this day, I think back on this memory with so much fondness. 

First, it reminds me that there’s always more than one way to climb a tree. But perhaps more importantly, it reminds me of the importance of trusting yourself, even if you can’t see the next step. 

You can climb this tree with your eyes shut. Have some faith. And begin.