! About the secret base
Just a short walk from my house, there was an ordinary empty lot.
It was after cat mating season and it wasn’t unusual to find kittens there, meaning the thick grass was head high and just the right height.
“Hey, that looks like a good place!” Our serious expressions made it a real mystery what we were looking for, and so we just looked at each other for a while. “As long as we’re careful and no one sees us coming and going, it’ll be ok. Let’s go for it!”
We’ll check it out for now, heading deep into the thick grass. There’s no path.
And there it was, about 30 feet in.
“This is great!” “Yeah, it is, there’s both sunny and shady spots!” “That settles it!”
That’s how we decided on the location of our secret base
Taking charge as usual, Semaza started giving orders. “Hideki, you bring the toys.” “Chara, you get the cardboard.” “I’ll bring the snacks.” We happily started working, just like the time we all got plastic models.
The kudzu vines made building the base easy and acted as good camouflage, but the constant stinkbugs on the vines were smelly.
Our secret base was ready in half a day, our wonderful base. It looked good. You had to go into the grass to see it. We didn’t go directly from school, but made our ways there separately, making sure to step on different grass stalks so as not to leave footprints.
We made it our absolute secret, without saying a word to each other, it just was.
The base was full of challenges, we’ll bring it tomorrow, this is necessary and so on....Though we argued all the time, our own spaces gradually came into being inside the base.
We brought in our favorite things, rocks, mud pies, wood, styrofoam.....a cat.
We confided in each other about girls that we liked.
How much time has passed?
By the time the reed seeds covered the thick grass, we were all playing at different things, and although I don’t know if it happened all at once, our base returned to its secret as part of nature.
from memory
