Go Ask Dad: Mud Kitchen
Muddiness is next to godliness.
It’s spring. I’ve mowed the backyard for the first time this season. While I was at it, I completed a chore that I’d been putting off for years: taking down the play kitchen by the fence. My delay was not due to the extensive nature of the work. There were no tools necessary. The rotted wood fell apart with no more than a nudge. The time had come.
But as shoddy as the kitchen had worn over the years, my memories of my kids playing there were strong and sturdy. I saw my little chefs in my mind’s eye, baking mud pies, pancakes, and cookies. My favorite was their smoothies —muddy water on the rocks (literally) and sprinkled with grass cuttings. Peals of laughter were part of the preparation of every item.
I would sit in one of the plastic Adirondack chairs, my eyes closed to the bright sun. My kids would “wake” me, giggles leaking around the sides of their serious faces as they presented me with their latest concoction. I’d play along, pretending to slurp the smoothie. They’d screech, “Eww! Gross!”
It is spring, a time of new beginnings and spring cleaning. As some might say, out with the old, in with the new.
Yet, I submit that, when the grim news of violence, both here and abroad, brings you close to despair, seek all that is earthly. Find a muddy child or two crafting recipes and wearing the fruits of their labor. When they offer such “food” to you, respond with exaggerated displays of chomping and slurping. I suspect that, despite much evidence to the contrary elsewhere, you will believe that there is something deeply good inside all of us just waiting to be shared.
Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the author of Little Big Moments, a collection of mini-essays about parenting, and Tigers, Mice & Strawberries: Poems. Both titles are available most anywhere books are sold online. Taylor-Troutman lives in Chapel Hill where he serves as pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church and occasionally stumbles upon the wondrous while in search of his next cup of coffee.
