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Small Town Soup by Karrie McAllister In Praise of Dirty Kids There is a pond at our family cabin that was dug just last year. With the dam complete and a good, wet spring, the small stream that runs down from the hills has finally given us reason to pack our swimsuits when we head to the woods. We don our oldest suits and flip flops and walk down the gravel driveway, dodging crickets and horseflies to the low spot that has become our preferable refreshment for hot summer days. Slowly we slink in, through scum and the foot of guck at the bottom that squishes between our toes. Once we’re in deep enough to swim, we don’t stop. We all know that if you stop kicking your legs for even a few seconds (or sometimes even if you don’t), a dozen baby bluegill will take their chance at exploring what is invading their space. And apparently our thighs taste better than the local algae. When our legs finally give out, we tip toe to the shallows and emerge on shore mud-stained and fish-bit and skip back up the hill as fast as we can. Flies must like the taste of our thighs as much as the fish. On the back porch, we stand and wait our turn to be hosed off and I realize, standing there squirting and getting squirted, just how happy we are. And how weird. As a full-time mom, I drag my kids around to plenty of brain-enriching activities. If it’s not music, it’s library or playdates, and it feels like all of the children are groomed to perfection, without a stray hair, let alone a splotch of dirt. And although I swear I’d never do it, I find myself spitting on my thumb to clean something off the cheeks of my kids and scrounging for a marginally clean tissue in my purse to empty their noses before we walk in, and it barely helps at all. It’s not that we don’t bathe. Some weeks it feels like I spend more time hunkered down next to a tub than I do in my own bed, and there’s a stack of empty coffee mugs in the bathroom to prove it. I don’t know how it happens, but for every day that is tolerable to go outside and play, there are two kids who are a little bit browner than they were in the morning. I’ll just say it. I’ve got dirty kids. And I couldn’t be more proud. There is a wonderful book that my husband is tired of me telling him about, “Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder.” I have a feeling that if the author, Richard Louv, ever came over sometime after lunch, he’d be as proud as I that my son is mud-spattered and my daughter has made an extensive leaf collection. He makes very many points in his book, but there is one basic premise: kids don’t go out and play enough. And from a parental viewpoint, he’s right. Thinking back on my own childhood, the most memorable days were the ones spent outside playing in the backyard, building hideouts and collecting pebbles for my rock collection. I was sun-baked and dirt-caked on a daily basis, and looking back, those were the days that mattered. But what about those little girls at story hour with perfect pigtails and the little boys with clean fingernails? There’s no way any parent could create that kind of clean and still make it there on time, even if they’re spitting on cheeks like I am. Were they ever dirty? I didn’t know it was even humanly possible for little boys to have clean fingernails. I can’t imagine these children kicking their legs in the pond so the fish don’t bite. Instead I imagine them kicking their mothers so they wouldn’t have to swim in anything but a pool. (Not that I could ever imagine these mothers in the pond either, mind you.) The fact that we prefer to swim in pond scum makes us the odd ones at the playground, even though the enjoyment we as a family receive from being out in nature outweighs any strange looks we get when we track mud into the grocery store; something I’m afraid so many kids have never had the pleasure of doing. I wonder, how many of those children even get a chance to really play outside and experience the kind of treefort-making worm-collecting fun that I did as I child? Is their time better spent behind a computer, and will my own kids be at a disadvantage because they’re not? These are the things I think about at the family cabin once we’ve been hosed off so that the pond scum is gone. They are thoughts that are equally fulfilling and scary, because I really don’t know if the choices I make for my kids will be the right ones. I suppose no one can ever be sure of that, no matter how many magazine articles or books we read. So to make the hardest decisions, we weigh it all and go with what’s in our guts. At this point, I’m willing to take the chance and let them play and enjoy the fact that they are kids while they are still kids. They’ll be big soon enough. In the peace of the Ohio woods, it’s not hard to hear what my gut is saying. It’s telling me to take advantage of the few last warm weeks of summer and head to the pond before fall comes and the water is too cold and the fish grow a little bigger.
Karrie McAllister, Webmaster and Regular Columnist, has dabbled in everything from coal mining to culinary classes. She and her family live in Northeast Ohio where conversations in the grocery store and pierogis are as common as Amish buggies. Her local column, Small Town Soup, appears in local newspapers and her writing has appeared on numerous web sites. She is slowly discovering the benefits of being a stay at home mom, including mid-afternoon naps, staying in pajamas until noon, as many leftover PBJ sandwich crusts as she wants, and being constantly entertained by her two nutty children. Read more of Karrie at her website, www.KarrieMcAllister.com.
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