MUD PIES

I'm glad I don't have Skype. You would not want to see the office I work in at home--it has a small wall of bookcases absolutely filled with books, even on their side in stacks, and notebooks. My computer desk is always messy except when I let my guilty conscious push me to file or toss the stuff on it. But the shelves hubby built to hold photos, copies of the three books I've published, and some memorabilia are neat as a pin. One of the framed pieces is a card I received from my stepdaughter for a birthday one year.

I've always been an outdoors gal so I'm sure I was the model for this little girl in her raincoat sitting in the mud. If there was a puddle or mud, I was in it. If there was a fence to be climbed over or under, I was there. My mother couldn't keep sashes on dresses because I tore them off climbing trees, or scooting under barbed wire. And either my toes or my shoes were forever covered with mud when it rained.

My friends and I took our toy dishes out under the large sycamore tree in the front yard to have our tea parties. When it rained one day, we decided to make mud pies in our little tin pie pans. The grass wouldn't grow up near the trunk so we had an abundance of ingredients for our "baking."

My brother was less than a year old and we often took him out with us in our play. Being the eldest daughter, I often had the job of entertaining him while Mama cleaned house or cooked super. On one particular day, he slapped around in the mud. We sculpted our pies in the pans and pretended to eat our concoctions. Only Ralph didn't just pretend.

When Mama came out to gather him up for his nap he had mud all around his mouth. After her screams of disgust and shouts at us, you might understand that was the end of making mud pies. And today, Ralph, denies he would have ever done anything so
gross.