I’d heard people talk about my Dad. Some folks said he was daring; other folks said he was foolish.

     I thought my Dad had guts. Especially on the Tuesday of the first week we moved into our new house on Kurtz Avenue. My Dad had been in the military and when he retired he moved the family to Texas. Dad said the Rodriguez roots were in the heart of Texas.

     His last duty assignment had been in Iraq. My siblings and I had been Army brats all our lives. This was our first real permanent home. It had a huge backyard. That Tuesday my father gave me, my younger nine-year-old sister and my older fifteen-year-old brother a thousand dollars each.

     Dad said we should spend the money to build, or purchase things of our choosing for the backyard.

     “I want to put in a garden,” Andrea said. “A garden with roses, wild flowers, daffodils, a fish pond, and a small white picket fence in front with a gate. The only people who can gain entry

are people whom I  allow,” Andrea said decidedly.

     Gain entry, allow  — I snickered to myself. Andrea was showing off her vocabulary usage again.

     “May I have the spot on the far east side near the back fence? I’ve seen the ground there. It is fertile and gets good sun,” Andrea said quickly.

     “I’d like the opposite corner,” Bennett said.

     That side of the yard was dry and barren; the only part of the back yard that was ugly. He could have it with no argument from me.

     “I want the trees,” I said thinking of the large mesquite trees with sturdy branches that spotted

our section of the Texas landscape. “And some space on the back porch.

     “I want to put in swings, and an old-fashioned metal glider on the porch, just like the one grandma talks about.”

     “So Andrea chooses a garden, and Dana chooses swings,” my father said with an approving look in his eyes. “What is your choice, Bennett?”

     Bennett looked out the kitchen window and to the spot he had chosen. “I’m going to build a lighthouse.”

     A lighthouse! I giggled. There was no lake, or river, much less an ocean with boat traffic anywhere near where we lived. I looked at our father to see his reaction. He merely nodded.

     “George, the handyman, and his son, Ben will help you. But you must budget paying them for the work they do,” my father said as he too was now looking at the spot Bennett had chosen.

     Bennett had been caught with drugs last spring. I knew my Dad had been worried and disappointed. Bennett had been sullen and often belligerent since then. I wondered if this was Dad’s way of helping him out.   

     We soon learned that it was cost-effective to let George and Ben only help with the hard work and let Mom and Dad take us to stores to buy stuff. Andrea and Mom went to the plant nursery and Dad took me to the hardware and building-supply stores. We didn’t have to pay our parents

for their help so we gladly accepted it.

     After Dad helped me measure five swing locations, I bought chains, ropes, boards and paint. I

wanted my swings to each have a distinctive color. Colors that would reflect whatever mood I was in when I swung on one. I chose pink, brown, yellow, blue and red.

     I wanted a green glider. Dad and I checked estate sales and finally found one sitting in an old barn.  It was expensive, but rust-free. I painted it by myself.

     I was creative with the swings. One tree would have two swings beneath it. Another tree would have an extra-long swing seat, large enough to hold two people at once. Then George told me about a wooden swing his sister had in her yard. We went to see it and I fell in love. It was built like a chair with arm rests.

     The rope that intertwined through it, allowed one to spin as well as swing. George said it was a complicated swing to build. He would do it for three-hundred and fifty dollars. I cringed inwardly at the cost, but I wanted that swing more than anything I had ever wanted before. I knew George was a fair man. So I agreed to pay him what he asked.

     Andrea and I got busy shopping immediately. Bennett spent days at the kitchen table drawing sketches of lighthouses.

     “That one looks like that lighthouse in that daytime drama Mom watches,” I said peering over his shoulder.

     Instead of his usual impatient dismissal of me, Bennett smiled at my interest. “That’s the one I’m going with. On the circular stripe that runs from top to bottom I am putting all our names. Starting with Dad’s.”

     “He’ll like that,” I said, suddenly feeling misty-eyed.

     “Would it be okay with you if I did the same thing with my swings?” I asked. “ Don’t want to steal your thunder.”

     “That would be great,” Bennett said. “Makes it easier to know which is the one you are talking about if you give them names. Better than just the different colors.”

     So now I got to choose which name to give which swing. Of course the chair swing would

bear my name and have the best tree spot in the backyard.

     While I painted the swing boards, I could see Andrea pull up weeds, slowly dig holes that she didn’t want to pay the handy men to do. So she could save her money for her special fish pond. I thought Andrea would have dirt-encrusted fingernails the rest of her life. Her green thumb and loving care were soon blessed with lovely blooms.  

     One of Dad’s architect friends, a former Army officer, drew the lighthouse plans for free. Dad and Bennett went to lumber yards. Luckily Ben, George’s son, was a good carpenter. When he wasn’t working on the lighthouse, Bennett went to yard sales, and thrift stores. He found nautical things to adorn the outside of the lighthouse. A metal anchor, a wooden helm, and a small flat ship carving were carefully placed in boxes for the final closing steps in the lighthouse construction.

     Bennet worked in the hot sun and late into the night. I watched with delight as Bennett and Ben built the circular staircase. The top outside railing for the lighthouse’s top outside platform came from an old train depot. The lighthouse was big. Larger I’m sure than my Dad would have expected, But there was plenty of room in the yard, though the new structure seemed at a distance to dwarf our house.

     Bennett had decided to paint the lighthouse white, with the ribbon-like circular outside stripe red. He scripted our names in stencil and painted each name with each person’s favorite color.

     It was about three-fourths of the way finished, when Bennett ran out of money. He still

needed to purchase the top windows and pay Ben to install them and the screens.

     “I’ll work after school and on weekends to get the money,” Bennett told Dad. Dad had not offered to give him more money. I figured he wanted to be fair to the three of us.

     I looked at the partially built lighthouse. It seemed to be pleading to the sky to be finished. .

     “I don’t need any old fish pond,” Andrea said to me. “Instead of that pond, I’m making a rock and pebbles pond. I’ve dug up lots of different-shaped, different-colored rocks. So I’m giving Bennett my last two hundred dollars.”

     I had only fifty dollars left. In bed I pondered what to do to help my brother. I went to George and asked him if he thought he could sell the chair swing he was making me to someone else. He agreed and I gave my brother four hundred dollars. He would have enough to finish the lighthouse and enough extra to buy that rotating light and the telescope he wanted to set up high in it. We would all be able to use the telescope. I promised myself that someday I’d earn enough money to buy that chair swing.

     Bennett hugged Andrea and me so hard when we gave him the money. “I know we fight all the time. And I’ve been hard to live with this past year. But, I’ve always loved my sisters,” he said.

     “You have made me very happy.”

     When the last nail, last drop of paint, had been put on the lighthouse our family stood outside, admiring it. Mom took photos.

     “Well, it’s definitely bigger than a tree house,” my Dad said.

     People from all around came to see Bennett’s lighthouse. He could have charged admission; there was so much interest. Pretty girls from his school thought Bennett was one cool dude.

     The local newspaper ran a feature story on the backyard lighthouse and on Bennett which led

to another feature from a garden magazine on Andrea’s garden. Nobody did a story on my swings, but everyone who came by would sit on them. My mother would daily read her Bible on

the glider that reminded her of her mother.

     I came home from school two weeks later and found a chair swing in its special spot under

the perfect tree. George smiled at me. “I never could make one right. Too complicated for me, I guess. My sister said to give you hers as a special gift.”

     “I love it,” I said, trying hard not to cry. George had even painted my name on it.

     “Thank you, George. Thank you so much. I’ll send a thank-you letter to your sister. If she misses it, she can come over anytime and use it.”

     George walked to me, gave me his arm and escorted me to the chair swing. I felt like a queen taking her throne.

     Since then I have sat on the Dana swing countless times and read, and spun and swung on it.  When I wasn’t swinging, I would often be up at the top of Bennett’s lighthouse and look toward the horizon, feeling refreshed and special. How many people had their very own backyard lighthouse? I knew we would never sell this house. Who in his right mind could leave this wonderful backyard?

     I thought my Dad, a former soldier, had guts. But it was more than courage that led to him giving his children a thousand dollars each and letting them decide how to spend it. My Dad was pretty smart too, probably the wisest man I would ever know.

     I knew that the three of us had chosen gifts for ourselves and for our family today and tomorrow. We had a family backyard paradise to share.

     I, Dana Rodriguez, knew, even at twelve, that in the future our kids, and grand kids would come here. They would come to enjoy, work in and cherish Andrea’s garden. They would swing on the swings, and rock on the glider. And they would climb that towering lighthouse that seemed, not only, to point the way to heaven, but also, to declare to heaven, that things were pretty nice down here, too.