Little Barefoot Girl

Sometimes the simplest little memory can sneak up on you, ambush you, and practically bring you to your knees. It can be hard to tell if the overwhelming emotion is a sense of loss, or the bittersweet joy of remembering a more innocent time.

I grew up on a rural hilltop in northern West Virginia. Our property adjoined my grandparents', and between Pap and Dad, they had well over a full acre in cultivation. Several enormous garden areas. Every night, Dad came home from work, ate dinner, then headed to the garden, usually with me right on his heels. I loved spending time with him in the garden, and today one of those memories was resurrected so vividly, I could almost close my eyes and relive it.

One of my favorite things was the spring tilling. Earlier, Dad would have used the tractor and plow to turn the earth, and that was entertaining in its own way, but I really loved when he got out the tiller to break up the soil into a finer texture in preparation for planting. Dad would maneuver the huge red tiller back and forth over the garden, followed closely by a skinny little girl with long, uncombed dark hair, skinned knees, and skin brown from the sun - and generous layers of dirt. I might have pokeberry juice on my fingers (they were so fun to pop!) and mosquito bites all over my arms and legs. I loved to dig my bare feet into the soft, damp, sun-warmed earth, wiggling my toes. Dad sometimes scolded me halfheartedly. "Here I am tilling this up all nice and loose, and you're right behind me packing it all down again." He didn't mean it, though, because he never made me stop.

Sometimes when darkness began to fall and we headed back to the trailer, the dew had already dampened the grass in the field. I was warm through and through, but the cool moisture on the grass chilled my toes, and washed away a bit of the garden dirt. The rest of the evening might be spent on the couch, curled up in a crook made by Dad's legs, watching Truth or Consequences, Wild Kingdom, Davy Crockett, or a football game. Yeah, I was a pretty major Daddy's Girl.

Tonight, Tom was tilling up our garden area, something we just started doing last year. I was "helping," because there are still quite a few roots and rocks in the soil, and I try to spot them and pick them out so they don't catch on the tiller's tines.

But there I was. Tom maneuvering the red tiller through our garden, and me behind him, barefoot, digging my dirty bare toes into the soft, damp, sun-warmed earth, wiggling my toes.

For a few minutes, it was forty years ago, and I was seven years old again, in the garden with my Dad.