For several months my grandmother has talked about the women who live in the treehouse in the back yard, how they will invite her to dine with them each morning, how they swing on vines like Tarzan, how they have sleds on ropes to go from tree to tree to tree. It took me a while to understand where this fantasy came from, and I ultimately decided that her mind formed it around the house on the other side of a break of trees, the roof of which can be seen through the foliage and the voices of the children over there can be heard. I'm not certain of that analysis, though, because sometimes she'll go to the dining room window, press her face against the glass, and look nearly straight up, as though the treehouse were above my house, so perhaps it's not the house in the next neighborhood her mind turns into a treehouse.
She stopped talking as much about the treehouse when the tropical storm came through and dropped a tree against the house. A positive sign, I decided, and I never brought it up again.
Her latest fantasy about the backyard is that the neighbors behind the house are launching rockets into space. They launched a satellite yesterday morning, she said. Was that her story to explain why she was yelling yesterday morning and brought me up out of bed? They're planning another launch today, but there are dogs barking, and until the dogs stop barking the neighbors cannot launch their rocket. I have no idea where this fantasy comes from. Rockets? Rockets?
Such is life. Sigh.