Cousins and water and the farm their folks grew up on. Saggy dirty diapers and no diapers and a dog who also wanted to play. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I truly love reliving my childhood through watching my kids play in the spaces where I grew up playing. My memories of my own childhood are filled with the visual environment. I see the memories as photographs, even in the absence of photographs. Of course a lot has changed, but so much has stayed the same, and in these experiences I am transported back 30 years to my own carefree dirty childhood on the farm in the summer with my sisters. I wish the girls would get to play with their cousins on my side of the family more, especially as the crew continues to grow.
The pool quickly got muddy, but not too muddy for tea parties. Water pooled on the concrete just enough for the kids to feel like they could productively stomp and make a splash. Winnie found some mud and painted her hands and walked around saying, “muddy, muddy.” The grown ups set up camp to watch the chaos far enough away from being potentially sprayed. When the kids got sick of the water, they ran to the field to chase Rudy around. They could just barely spot his orange head poking out from the green soybeans. Then they decided to play a game where they went in the first row, then the second, and all the way to the fourth racing until they were itchy enough they needed to get wet again…this time inside in the bathtub.
All Mountains and Molehills 