Mud

The excitement of winter had turned to cabin fever, and we eagerly anticipated spring.  The lake started to turn liquid again, as did the six foot high snow banks in our driveway.  The first technical day of spring came, a misleading event; a few minutes outside would quickly make me realize my short sleeved shirt was not quite enough and that the word ’spring’ did not have a universal meaning.

My siblings and I made our way outside, determined to play on the grass, soggy though it was.  It had been 5 months since we’d seen it and we welcomed it as a dear friend.  We explored the property, seeing what damage had been done during the blizzards and winds, amazed that everything survived, and even looked alive and wanting to grow.

The dirt driveway became a color we had never seen before; a dark, rich velvety brown, almost a black.  We quickly discovered that not only was it a different color, it had taken on a life of its own.  It seemed hungry to eat anything that stepped on it, and it particularly liked to swallow shoes.  After having learned the hard way, my father kept a pair of rubber slip ons near the door, and the rest of us wore our boots to the car and carried our shoes.

Easter Sunday came, and my family and I donned our best Sunday clothes.  My father wore his usual suit and tie, and my mother, through the use of ribbons and new tights, made Cath and me somehow feel that we were dressed better than normal, despite the fact that our dresses were second and third generation ‘gently used’ hand-me downs. 

We went out to the car, my brother wearing his boots as shoes, and my sister and I pulling our galoshes over our white-tights clad feet, carrying our Sunday shoes in our hands. 

The mud was at a prime that day, there having been several days of constant above-freezing weather: a deep thaw.  We slowly made it to the car, cautiously aware that to lose a boot to the black monster was to ruin your Easter dress.  We piled into the large brown station wagon, my sister and I sitting in the middle while Andrew climbed into the wayback.  And we were on our way.

My father managed to back the car out, but as he turned the wheel to start the drive down the driveway, we could feel something was wrong. The car was humming, but wasn’t moving.  My sister and I looked at each other as my father put the car back in reverse, and tried again.  We were stuck in the mud.  On Easter Sunday, when the regular attendees were supposed to arrive early to get good seats.

“Alright,” my father said, as we waited with dread, “Everybody is going have to help push the car out.” We all groaned, but we knew we had no choice. The air had taken on the tense, electric feeling that happened when my father meant business.

We stepped out of the car, and saw the damage.  The car was sunken into ruts about 8 inches deep, the black sludge relentlessly getting deeper with each spin of the tire.  We knew it was going to be messy, and our battle with the slop would be a long one. 

My mother got into the driver’s seat, and the four of us trudged to the back of the car.  “One, two… three!” my father counted.  I pushed as hard as my six year old arms could push, as my mother pressed on the gas.  The tires spun, and all I could think about was how embarrassing it would be to walk into church with mud on my dress. The car didn’t budge.  We tried again, watching the tires create new piles of mud around us as they tried to escape the suffocating darkness.

By that point my white tights were splattered in mud, but my dress wasn’t too bad. My sister’s was about the same. My brother was loving every second of it; he was convinced that somehow, in his four-year-old strength, he and his dad were going to move that car.

And we did. After about ten minutes of rocking, pushing, rocking, and pushing, we managed to get the station wagon out of its original ruts.  As the tires finally gripped, my mother pressed on the gas and drove to harder soil.  Fearing a repeat performance, she drove to higher, dryer ground as the rest of us walked behind, carefully avoiding getting our boots stuck.

We made it to Easter Sunday, albeit a bit late, and none of us told anyone about our experience fighting the black beast. I was  slightly embarrassed about the whole situation; how a big, heavy station wagon could be defeated so easily by something as innocent as wet dirt.  But from that point on, my mother always referred to spring as ‘mud season’… by the time the mud finally hardened again, it was already summer.