Childhood Memory

[kyra_ojosverdes]

When I was eight, we lived in Cedar City, Utah while Dad was at sea. In the backyard were a couple of trees that redrita would climb ... to be attacked by swarms of ants ... and return to climb another day because damned if the ants were going to keep her out of the tree. If I was eight, she was four.

Also in the backyard was a patch of skunk cabbage. I had a secret hiding place either indoors or outdoors for every place we lived. In Utah, my secret outdoor hiding place was under the skunk cabbage. It was tall enough that I could sit underneath it. There were several plants, and their broad leaves arched over the packed reddish earth where I'd sit and think and be alone with myself.


Thanks to kightp for the memory.

Comments

[kightp.livejournal.com]

*smile* You're welcome - although out here, the skunk cabbage grows in such swampy spots that I don't think it would be much fun to sit under!

[kyra-ojosverdes.livejournal.com]

The dirt there had a lot of clay, and that part of Utah is very dry, so generally the ground under the skunk cabbage was dry, packed earth.

... I did once make a first-rate mudpie in that yard though... I mixed it up and put it in a scavenged tuna can and put it under a black piece of plastic to bake. It poofed up in the middle. I was appropriately proud of myself. I also dug clay out of the ground, made little pots, and put them in the chimney clean-out door thing to bake.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Oooh, I have many happy memories of clay, earth and mudpies.

Digging holes in the red-clay bank at the rear of the playground in Alabama with Alice Marie Sprouse to make houses for fairies, and furnishing them with matchbox beds and tables made out of thread spools begged off my mom. ...

When we were stationed in Japan (my dad was in the Air Force), living in a paper-walled Japanese house while waiting for boring old on-base housing to open up, and bonding with the little Japanese girl at the end of the road over mudpies mixed up in her OMG-cool batter-powered *blender*, even though neither of us understood a word the other said. ...

Talking my brother into tasting a particularly realistic-looking mud "cookie" by pretending to take bites of it myself. He still doesn't quite trust my cooking ...

[marialuminous.livejournal.com]

Talking my brother into tasting a particularly realistic-looking mud "cookie" by pretending to take bites of it myself. He still doesn't quite trust my cooking ...

Hahaha...

One of my brothers foiled my mud-pie plans by actually enjoying the taste of dirt.

[kyra-ojosverdes.livejournal.com]

Wow, those are wonderful! Thank you.

[redrita.livejournal.com]

That also explains my pathological fear of anything with more than two legs climbing on me.

[kyra-ojosverdes.livejournal.com]

You'd get so mad when the ants would start biting you. Not surprised, not wounded... mad. Someone would rescue you (you'd be about the level of my shoulders... my 8 year-old shoulders) and help brush the ants off you. Once the bites had receded you'd stand there and glare at the tree, check to see whether Mom was looking, and start climbing again.