When I was Three.

When I was three-years-old, my world was only as big as the two blocks surrounding my grandma's house. Her house was my true magnetic north: next door was my friend, Keith, and his matted mutt of a dog, aptly named Stinky. Keith had bitten the soft feet off of my Barbie Doll, Trixie, and she could no longer wear her shoes. I imposed a ban on Keith for a whole week; he was not allowed inside of my grandmother's fenced-in yard. To win me back, he brought me gasoline scented scratch and sniff stickers, a rare find, and the banishment was lifted. A half-block down the street was the nickel candy store where I bought Sixlets and Swedish fish with the crumpled two dollars that Miss Sophie, my grandmother's friend, would press into my hand at church on Sundays. The money was damp from the holy water she used to make the sign of the cross. Miss Sophie's gray puff wigs were never on straight and her cheeks smelled like baby powder when she kissed me. My grandmother and I would ride with Miss Sophie to church, me in the backseat drinking white grape juice out of a sippy cup and my grandmother in the passenger seat yelling, "Right! Make the right - NOW!" Miss Sophie wasn't really a bad driver, but she had been blind for over a decade and drove on memory and my grandmother's urging shrieks.

The jewel of my two-block world was my grandma's back yard. She had a jungle of kohlrabi, tall stocks of white baby corn, seedless cucumbers that she pickled, crisp lettuce that rabbits snacked on, pungent onions that made me crinkle my sun-freckled nose, and tomatoes that she picked too soon for fried green tomato sandwiches. I hadn't known fear or disappointment yet, but I told my important secrets to the ladybugs on the basil leaves and the monarch butterflies lilting through the maze of yellow wax beans growing high and tangled on poles. This land, this dirt and it's creations were my friends, my Narnia and my playground. My grandma would line dry her clothes with meticulous precision through the backyard and I would watch, sitting amongst the herbs, fascinated by the rows of white sheets, white underwear, and white towels flapping against the robin's egg blue sky, soaking in the smell of summer breezes. Still, that's what summer is to me: bleached white sheets against the bluest of skies: so white it makes your eyes hurt and so blue it makes you forget that land exists.

The screen door slapped shut behind me as I flew out of grandma's house with bare feet smacking across her wraparound porch, down the five big porch steps, and around the side of her gray and white house into the backyard. It was summer and the sun beat on my blond-haired head; my grandma called me, "Buttercup," the same flowers that were in her front yard, because of my yellow hair. She would hold one of the tiny yellow flowers under my chin and say, "If this makes your chin look yellow, then you're as sweet as my banana cream pie. If it doesn't, then you're like rotten milk." That never sounded threatening to me and I never worried; I was always banana cream pie.

As soon as I hit the backyard, I tore off my little pink shorts and white eyelet top and rolled in the grass, doing summersaults, each blade tickling and prodding me to remove my "Saturday" underpants. I knew I was a big girl because I had learned how to read and wore the corresponding day of the week underwear. I ripped those white and pink Saturday underwear off like they were on fire and threw them in the air, watching them spin and flutter back to my feet. I meandered, naked and glorious, through the rows of vegetables, fingering dewy leaves and leaving child footprints in the dark chocolate dirt of the garden.

I plopped my bare bum down in the dirt, after the tomato vines and before the snap pea vines. The dirt was so wet that it felt like I was sitting in cold pudding cake, the kind my grandma made for Sunday dinners. When the cake was just out of the oven, you poured pudding over it and put it in the fridge overnight. That's what I pretended my bum was in: cold pudding cake. Sweat moistened my face and curled the stray hairs around my forehead, but I had goose bumps on my pinky-white, chubby baby legs. I squirmed about, really planting myself, before the tall, green snap pea vines that shaded me from the glowing sun. My favorite thing on earth next to my goldfish, Silky, that I won at that summer's carnival, was my grandma's snap peas. She said my little hands were good for the snapping of their crunchy shells. I didn't eat the shells; I hurriedly tossed them aside to get to the good part - the baby peas inside. I snapped off one-half of the shell, lengthwise, and put my little pink tongue in the groove and licked out the crunchy young peas. I let the peas linger in my mouth, rolling them around with my tongue - anticipating each firecracker burst of their skin breaking open. They popped in my mouth like little
worlds exploding and I was flooded with the sweetness of peas, bits of cold dirt and the faint taste of Johnson's Baby Magic from my fingers and hands.

"Sweet buttercup, it's time for supper. Come in and wash yourself," my grandma chirped out of the kitchen window that faced the garden.

Barely, I could make out her face from in between branches and vines and leaves. The little, curly, white puff of hair framing a face with a smile as wide as her wraparound porch, and I just knew she had on her favorite apron - she embroidered the strawberries that danced around the hem herself. In her pockets would be Milk Duds, because I loved them. Even back then, I knew to act surprised when she would reach in and pull a sweet candy out for me. I didn't want to ruin it for her; she loved to see me smile.

I stood up, brushed the dirt off of my legs and bum, and found my underpants scattered among the bushy green tops of carrots. Slowly, I put one leg in my Saturday "unmentionables," as my grandmother would say, then the other leg. Placing my shirt over my head, careful not to get dirt on the white cotton, and pulling my shorts over my legs, I sighed and looked around. Picking up a handful of cool dirt, I let it tumble through my fingers. I loved my grandma and I loved her fried chicken that I smelled for dinner, but I didn't want to go inside yet.

This was my golden moment of childhood and my touchstone of peace for decades to come; I didn't know that then, but I lingered in the garden and in my child intuition. I had great power and autonomy in picking the peas, relishing my nakedness, and claiming my little world so unabashedly. Even then, I knew it was magical. I memorized the layout of the garden, froze the baby snap pea taste in my collective consciousness and somehow yearned for what I knew one day would be gone. Eventually, I always spent my two dollars, my Barbie now teetered on stumps, and my grandma always ran out of her pocketed Milk Duds.