Last week, my husband and I took the kids to Dame Farm to pick some strawberries. While not die-hard locavores, we do try to do as much in-season eating as possible, I’ve recently learned to make jam.
Unsurprisingly, the kids got tired of squatting in the strawberry rows before Eric and I felt we had enough strawberries to fill our freezer and jam jars. I volunteered to go exploring with them while Eric continued to pick. It was early in the season, so there was not too much to look at yet…..the plants were barely popping up in the fields, and none of the animals were out. We wandered around for a with Bryson (our four year old) and I identifying different types and colors of flowers while trying to keep Deliah (our twenty month old) from decapitating every plant within her reach.
After several minutes of poking about and the near-death experience of a beautiful parsley plant, we found ourselves on the edge of the strawberry patch next to the irrigation system. The sprinklers had been on that morning, and the water had made pool in the dirt road. The kids started playing in the muddy water, delighting the the patterns the created in the puddles and the feel of the mud between their fingers. Given they were in their oldest clothes and we were heading straight home after our strawberry picking, I didn’t really care if they got dirty while we waiting for Eric to finish up.
The kids started to dip their feet into the water, and soon both were up to their calves in the mud. They thought it was great! They waded into the puddle, running from one side to the other, dragging sticks along the bottom of the puddle and chasing each other in tiny circles. After they had been at it a few minutes, and were rapidly becoming totally soaked, an elderly man stopped by on his way in to pay for the strawberries. ”Those yours?” he asked, gesturing to the kids. I nodded, smiling, ready for a rebuke on how irresponsible I was for letting them get dirty. He paused for a minute, watching them, and then said quietly “Thank you. That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve seen all year.” A few minutes later a woman hurried by, also on her way in to pay. She stopped short when she saw the kids and started to laugh. She turned to me and said “Are you their mother?” I nodded again, not sure what was to come. ”You are such a great mom! I want to be that good of a mom.”
Over the next ten minutes, five more people approached me -apparently all unrelated! – asked me if Bryson and Deliah were my kids and then gave me some kind of compliment on my parenting. One of them even thanked me for “sharing this beautiful scene.”
Because I let my kids RUN IN THE MUD.
I don’t think I’ve ever gotten that many compliments on my parenting in my LIFE, let alone all in the space of twenty minutes.
I’m really fascinated by this experience, and by the reaction it seemed to bring about in total strangers. Was it my willingness to let them get really, really dirty that made me such a “great mom” for those twenty minutes? Was is the fact that it was a sunny day on a country farm and no one was talking on a cell phone? Are kids just tremendously compelling when laughing and splashing in the mud?
Not my kids.....but the "kids cute in mud" theory seems to hold true!
What do you think?
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