When the snow melted. . .

in the spring, we were disappointed that slipping and sliding down the hill was no longer possible. Or was it? One spring day I was playing on the hill, which was a bit muddy. Up and down, up and down I trotted, wearing out the early spring grass. It got more and more slippery - more like the snow I remembered and enjoyed from winter. Pretty soon I could stand at the top and - swoop - right down to the bottom of the hill. My sister came out to see what I was doing, and joined the mud slide. Our neighbor from across the street came, too. She was a few years older and was surprised that people were allowed to play in the mud, but she got into the spirit of the game, and we laughed and slid for quite a while.

The parents in the neighborhood all had a way of calling their children home to meals. Our Mom rang a bell, the neighbors had a whistle; everyone had something. When the bell rang and we went in - oh my! It turned out that our parents had seen us out the window, but by that time we were already so muddy they let us enjoy it. "You looked so happy," our mom explained later, after the neighbor mom complained to her about all the mud.

We had to undress in the garage, and head straight for the bathtub. We were covered in mud from head to toe (we were ages four and five at the time). I don't know if my mom ever got the mud out of our clothes - she wasn't the kind to dwell on such things. Years later my dad just smiled and said, "I've never seen so much mud."

They did make it clear that there was not to be a repeat performance of "Sara and Diana's mud day". :>}