Dirty bird

Anonybabe loves the dirt, thank Jesus. If she didn't we might have a hard time finding things to talk about. My best friend in high school was completely dirt-averse. She repeatedly told the story of how she was set down in the freshly plowed rows in the fields behind her house as a baby, and how she cried and cried until she was picked up and taken into the house to be cleaned off. We haven't kept in touch.

I'm no hard-core dirt enthusiastic like my mother and grandmothers. They had an itch that could only be scratched by getting their hands in their gardens every spring through fall. I also have farmers in my family, at least as far back as my great great grandparents on both sides, and as recently as my dad, who reluctantly oversaw the family rice and soybean farm until he was 40. I grew up watching my dad shoot at red-wing blackbirds from the drivers window of his pickup. (A decidedly pointless and assholish thing to do, even if they were eating his rice. But then my dad was the resident spoiled rich kid of the community. And now my digression is digressing.)

So I like dirt alright. But Anonybabe seems to delight in it. If we are in the yard, she will crawl through the grass to the nearest available dirt patch. She'll plop herself down in it and start digging. She no longer puts anything and everything in her mouth, but she put a hand full of black soil in her mouth the other day and then smiled beatifically at me through blackened teeth when I went to swish it out.

I start to feel a little negligent when her knees and the tops of Anonybabe's feet get so dirty that I could easily write "wash me" on them with a wet finger, and she has little dirt half-moons at the ends of her fingers and toes where the soil is packed under her nails. But then I remember the joy of holding a cool handful of freshly turned dirt in the palm of my hand. I think of the smell. And I set Anonybabe in the grass to crawl away whereever she'd like.