The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful. - e. e. cummings
The pond behind my parents' house in Colorado is filled mostly from the valley-floor water table, with a little irrigation-ditch inflow.--- It is a small lens into the water flowing underground, a reassuring diaphragm supporting the green of that place and causing the pond to rise and fall with the seasons.
Soon, the water will start creeping up the steep, rocky banks. Cottonwood cotton will blanket its surface in early summer and, barring upstream beaver activity, the pond will be clear and full as summer rolls into autumn. Kids, dogs and horses swim in the water; great blue herons pause there; we paddle around it in an inflatable raft, throw rocks in and watch them splash, occasionally cast a hopeful fishing line. In the winter it freezes for sleds and snow boots.
Once, for a January ice-skating birthday party, the whole pond was set on fire. Since 200 feet of connecting hoses didn't work to deliver new, surface-smoothing water to the crusty, bumpy ice, my dad decided the solution lay in gasoline. This decision was made during the party, which became, at the point of pond ignition, a memorable one. After the flames (mostly) subsided, the ice was indeed smooth, albeit blackened. I still worry for the downstream effects.
The pond began with the house and exists as a sort of balanced inverse, an adaption of the law of definite proportions; it was excavated to help build the foundation a certain level above the floodplain. But, like many things incorporated into a landscape, it seems like it's been there forever. Or maybe that's just because I don't remember it ever not being there.
Childhood memories have a way of automatically moving features—physical and emotional—into the category of "forever." I'm becoming more aware of this as my son enters the age of memory retention. My husband remembers things from when he was very young, like two or three. My earliest memories begin much later, and even then there is some question as to whether they're actual memories or just old photographs.
But assuming Theo is somewhere in the middle, he'll be able to recall his experiences now. This is both a sweet and terrifying realization: I'm glad he might remember some of the fun things we do together and the magical things he explores on his own, and solipsistically I'm also concerned that he'll remember all the ways in which I fall short as a parent. For now, it's enough to think that Theo's early memories might include this pond.
We were there recently and the water was quite low, revealing a nice section of goopy mudflats. Goopy mudflats = pure joy. We were shielded from the wind by the banks, so it was nearly hot at mud/water level. My mom held my daughter's hand as she toddled over the rocks, helping her navigate the sucking mud without falling into the water. I followed with my camera, shooting 55 pictures of each moment for eventual storage in our iPhoto library (a prodigious catalogue from which we rarely print anything).
Theo romped around for a while until the goop sucked at his boots and he stepped right out of them. Theo looked up at me, his expression a joyful conglomerate of uh-oh! and oooh! The mud quivered beneath his weight and oozed between his toes. He finished his transect barefoot and turned around for more.
His world was the bowl of a low-water pond and the ineffable delights of its silty, slurpy bottom. It was defined by sensory abundance: the sounds of squishy mud; the alkaline taste when it unavoidably transferred from hand to tongue; its cold thickness enveloping each foot; the boggy odors of plants reviving; the brown- and grey-scape of gushiness bounded by dry stones and grasses. These are the things memories are made of, right?
I certainly remember the sensory engagement of mud, though I haven't succumbed to its pleasures in a long time. Part of me wishes I'd abandoned my camera that day in favor of ankle-deep pond sludge. It would've been fun, and I want us to remember times mucking about together—but I know, too, the importance of mucking about alone.
Theo was having a great time, and I think it's critical for kids to have independent exploration time, especially outdoors in the mud. It was lovely just to watch him, to observe his state of wonder and absorption, to imagine his memories of this place accreting to my own in some pond-held memory bank. And I loved seeing Sylvia's early mudflat explorations at the hand of my mom.
I kept following them all with my camera—Must document! Who knows, maybe someday we'll sit down to look at these pictures, wherever they'll be on the hard drive—I'll tell Theo about watching him in the mud and he can tell me what it felt like.
