Emotional Break Down, Bye Cherry Tree, Bye Childhood

Ever since I can remember it’s been standing there.

Every summer we saw it going from flowers to small hard yellow berries to finally become red juicy sweet cherries in the end of July. Impatient kids as we were we always tried to eat them before they were ready. These acts of impatience always resulted in stomach ache, but it was all part of the ritual. My great grandmother used to hang tea towels in it to scare away birds. To the neighbours it must have looked like a massive weird christmas tree.

This past weekend was the first time this summer I had the chance to come back to Singö and the fantastic summer place my family has there. To my big dismay the old cherry tree is dying and needs to be cut down after the summer.

This took me back memory lane big time.
Back to hunting for sticklebacks and then keep them alive in a tiny bucket (almost always failed, don’t get what our parents were thinking when they later got us guinea pigs)
Back to moving everything from inside the house to the grass outside just to build our own “house”.
Back to making the big expedition to the kiosk to buy ice cream, used to take us at least an afternoon (it’s 1.8 km and according to Nike Run it took me 10 minutes this morning).
Back to going on “cruises” on our uncles old windsurfing board along the shore to a place we called The Rivera. We definitely didn’t windsurf, the 3 of us were sitting in a row paddling with oars.
Back to having our own sandbox restaurant making dandelions soup which we forced all grown ups to eat (and pay for).

Looking back at all my childhood summer memories it hits me that I should be working with project management in a creative environment in the future. Because that is what I loved about those summers and that is what I still love. Having nature (and very forgiving grandparents) as a playground, coming up with all kinds of crazy projects to keep us entertained. Can’t be very different from having the tech industry as a playground (and very forgiving managers), coming up with all kinds of crazy projects to keep innovation and revenue going. I guess somewhere along being busy growing up & fitting in I completely forgot about these passions. What did you love doing as a kid? Is it something that can help you deciding which direction to take next?

For me this insight makes it a little bit easier saying good bye to the old Cherry Tree. Saving a seed and planting a new one can be my next project. Any volunteers on being in charge of tea towels?

/Sofie

Ps. To be honest we probably spent some time practising our moves to this tune as well (at least the summer of 1996)