When I was a kid, we had a long commute to church. And because we were Good Christians, that commute happened twice on Sundays and once on Wednesdays. My parents were excellent at side hustling, and so took on the maintenance and cleaning job for the church, which meant we spent much of Saturdays cleaning bathrooms, vacuuming carpets, mowing grass, and cleaning the giant glass windows in the vestibule of our church building.
Not much of that has to do with dirt except that on this long commute, my favorite moment happened to be the passing of the huge piles of dirt. Top soil and manure and compost, mulch and clay and everything a landscaper would need. It’s still there - this dirt factory on the road between two small towns in middle Georgia, and it still smells delightful. I’d roll down my window and breathe deeply. I’d ponder at what one could do with that much dirt.
As an adult, I’ve had less to do with dirt than I did as a kid, making mud cakes and splashing through puddles and managing the complicated maze of creek beds on our property. I remember planting annuals with my mom, wandering through the greenhouse with my grandmother, and watering our very thirsty garden patch.
But this fascination with dirt carries through, rendering any purchase of garden gloves a bad investment, while professional-worthy manicures are ruined. I think so often about the quality of the soil in our garden bed that you might think me crazy. I frequently daydream about being buried in dirt, and occasionally feel the urge to eat it… geophagia, they call it - borne from mineral deficiency. Pica, an eating disorder. When the nursery worker, tattooed and sweaty, loads bags of compost into the backseat of my car, he warns me that it smells bad. I take a deep breath in. I don’t mind, I say.
Once, as a teenager, we took a trip to a beach town. Texas? I vividly remember the pounding of my heart as I sat next to the redhead of a crush-turned-boyfriend in my mom’s dark green Mustang convertible. He could drive a stick shift… isn’t that dreamy? I also vividly remember the youngest kid of a large brood sitting squarely in the middle of the sand, shoving grit into his mouth. His mother laughed at her laxness as a mother - she’d been worn down by her many children and took things like babies eating dirt in stride.
Last week, I dog sat for a new client who’d recently dug up their driveway, in preparation for new concrete. It was a rainy summer weekend and the driveway became a muddy moat, engulfing my brand new white running shoes in its red clay magnificence.
I relish composting. Yesterday, a huge bag of uneaten vegetables, turned into the compost bin. A spin, a look. Happy fat grubby worms and ants eat their way through last week’s rinds and scraps. The slimy mass slowly becomes rich, silky, hungry. I bury some unfinished compost in the garden; it sprouts enthusiastic squash plants. I laugh.
Words for dirt are so satisfying. Loam. Smut. Sludge. Petrichor. Teach me another language so I can learn their words for dirt. Mail me a small container of your soil so I can paint my face. Smear me with your mud.
The process for reclaiming old clay is called wedging, a favorite task of mine in the studio. When I die, I prefer to be sunk into the clay, turned over and over in a muddy trench, poured out in the garden bed so I can reabsorb. I prefer to be wedged back into the earth. Part of me might go with the wind, another part in the ocean, but please plant me where I always wanted to be - buried beneath the ground, anchored in recreation, sprouting new growth, rich and loamy and satisfying.