Childhood & Nostalgia

The rope swing still hung there, fraying at the edges, like an old photograph held too long in the sun.

The mango tree had grown thicker, taller, wiser—or maybe I had simply shrunk with time.

It was the first place I returned to when I came back. Not the front door. Not the rooms that forgot my footsteps. But here—this patch of earth where I had buried so many pieces of myself, believing they’d bloom again someday.

I didn’t expect the swing to still be here.

The house was empty. My mother had passed three weeks earlier. My brother, Daniel, had moved to another country before that. And my father? He had disappeared long before we knew what kind of silence lasts a lifetime.

So it was me, alone, dragging my suitcase through the gravel, and then straight to the backyard.

Back to the tree.

Back to her.

She was never truly mine to name, but I did anyway. I called her Nina.

She was the girl from three houses down, always barefoot, always bruised from tree climbing and laughter. We were both nine when she taught me how to whistle through our cupped palms and blade of grass. Eleven when we made a time capsule we never buried. Twelve when she kissed my cheek because “the world might end soon, you never know.”

It didn’t end. Not that year.

But everything else did.

We’d meet under the mango tree after school, sometimes in silence, sometimes screaming into the sky just to hear the wind answer. That swing was our spaceship. Our lifeboat. Our confessional.

One summer, she told me her mother cried in the bathtub every Sunday.

Another, I confessed I thought the world was made up of questions no one really wanted answered.

We grew older, the swing sagged. Our voices changed. One day, she stopped showing up.

Her house stood locked for months. Then a For Sale sign appeared.

Then a silence that not even wind dared to stir.

Years passed.

I left for college. Then work. Then other cities.

The tree stayed. The swing waited. The ghosts of mangoes past lay scattered like forgotten words.

I forgot her laugh. I forgot the exact shade of her skin in the sun.

But I remembered how my heart raced when she told me I was “weird, but good weird.”

I remembered how we danced barefoot in the rain, daring lightning to find us.

Inside the house, everything smelled like paper and cinnamon.

I didn’t want to sort through boxes. Not yet.

I opened the back door again, walked barefoot into the grass, and sat on the swing.

It groaned like a tired memory.

And then I remembered: we had written letters.

To our future selves.

It was Daniel who found the tin box, tucked behind the base of the tree, under a rock we had once painted to look like a ladybug.

Two letters inside. One with her name. One with mine.

Mine was full of silly things:

"Dear Me, I hope you’re a good person. I hope you still like mangoes. I hope Nina is still your best friend."

"Please don’t forget how to climb trees. Or how to say sorry."

The ink had faded, but my heart hadn’t.

The second letter—hers—was written in cursive. I never knew she could write like that.

Dear whoever finds this,

If it’s me, remember not to get boring.

If it’s you, remember I liked you before I knew what liking meant.

Life’s weird. But good weird.

If we forget each other, that’s okay. Just don’t forget how the stars looked when we promised to never grow old.

Love, Nina

I cried for a girl who never truly belonged to me, in a place that never truly forgot us.

Some parts of childhood aren’t meant to last.

But others—like laughter beneath a mango tree, and letters written in blue ink—become part of the soil we grow from.

I tied a new rope on the swing the next day.

Maybe, just maybe, some other child will find it.

And listen for the wind’s answer.