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PipLove: A story of tortious interference with an inheritance

Tag Archives: love


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A Bucket Of Mud

            I feel a spiritual homelessness as I sit and cry on the kitchen floor.

            “Don’t look back.  Look ahead,” my Mom used to say, when she was out of other words to say, as I suffered through the dirty mud of life.

            Yet, these days, all I seem to do is look back, look back, look back.  Dear, Sweet, Jesus.

            Yet, it’s not just about miserable stuff.  There were ups-and-downs.  Either way, looking back can set me to tears. 

            Owning up to this setback, I wipe myself off of the kitchen floor.  I change my mental direction and stand tall.

            Then, I look back at the times when I used to look ahead, especially as a young mother. My heart was right-side-up then, filled with joy as my spirit anchored to my home.

            There were days, so many days in the summertime, back then, thirty years or so ago, when I raced home from work to find Mom and my young daughter sitting in the yard of my home, waiting for me.  I’d drag a briefcase and camera from the car, give kisses and hugs hello, then sink into a lawn chair. It was rush, rush, rush, take a breath, then rush, rush, rush some more, every day filled with work, work, work.

            Mom would rattle on about her usual routine, end with notes of my daughter’s afternoon bath, shampoo, and change of clean clothes, as she cared for her while I was at work in an office all day.  One time, as we sat under the shade of a dogwood tree, the remnants of their playtime lay about us – a bucket of mud, shovel, toy dishes – all used to make mud pies.         

            Freshly bathed, brown waves of hair, soft, damp curls touching her cheeks, my daughter suddenly tucked the lacey hem of her blue sundress up at the ribbon-tied waist, kicked off shoes, and in a flash, stomped into the squishy mud in the bucket.

            She stood soldier-still, proud, yet carefree and content, in that bucket.  I snatched my camera; her bright, blue eyes and big grin stared straight into the lens.

            “Oh no!  She just had a bath!”  Mom scolded, and jumped up to save my daughter, (who ignored rules of cleanliness and stood in mud pie leftovers), from this messy predicament.   Immediately, I fell to looking back, and frowned about Mom’s cleanliness obsession. I looked back at teenage years when I was quite occupied every Saturday morning with household chores.  I agonized over the dusting, vacuuming, and stripping of bed sheets carried out every week.  Nag, nag, nag, went Mom with strict rules.  Push, push, push, went her anxiety onto me with thundering fear, until the last bed was made, the last blouse hung up, the bath towels folded, dishes dried, garbage thrown, and kitchen swept.  I did enough housework to last a lifetime back then, I’d later think, begrudgingly doing drudgery in my own home.

            My thoughts turned ahead – my daughter getting dirty in a bucket of mud was the grandest sight to behold.  In a way, it released me from God-fearing thoughts about those teenage years under the rule of Mom.  The dirty mud of life was not all about anxious suffering.  It can be about freedom to find a way and muddle through one’s own bucket of mud.

            “It’s okay!  Don’t worry about it!” I said to Mom, as I joyfully laughed and clicked my camera.

            “This photo is for you, sweetheart.  A bucket of mud to look back on.  Know that you don’t always have to follow rules – trust yourself.  Go boldly, choose to get dirty, step into that bucket, stand proud in the ups-and-downs,” I said, as my joyous spirit anchored to my beautiful little girl.


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WILD One Long Sentence For One Short Time

We are wild girls in our Seaside Avenue yard, with our fierce yells, pinching, hitting, pulling of hair, that intermingles with our belly-crawling, in-the-dirt, tangled play, as I boss my sisters and the girls next door, with my hands on my hips, ordering them that first we play dodgeball, then ring-a-levio, break into teams where we capture the enemy and put them in an old trailer with a hitch – that’s the jail – or tag, or kickball, and then we’ll swing on the neighbors’ swing and slide on the slide, and climb the old crabapple tree, and when we’re done with all of that, I’ll make them play ring-around-the-rosie for little Maria, until we fall down too pooped to do anything else, yet, out will come the colored construction paper, the ordering of collecting leaves, and showing Barb how to paste the leaves into a figure, with a leaf head, arms, body, legs, and don’t forget to draw a red-crayoned smiley face so you have something to smile back at, which only leads me to make a family of puppets out of cardboard, so I can put on a made-up puppet show, in-between telling them to shut up and listen until that’s over, and I’ve had enough and take some space to think, lean my cousin’s hand-me-down ten-speed bike up against the big oak tree, so I can climb up on it, thrilled by the ride down the slope of the yard on a bike way too big for me, until Mom comes outside and orders me off that bike – it’s way too big and I’ll break my neck – (soon she makes the bike disappear, like she did with our pet dog cat, and duck), but I don’t care, it’s freeing to glide, until I get scared and stop before I do break my neck, ignoring Mom as she tells all of us to be quiet and turns to the house again, leaves us in peace until our scratching, fighting, mixed-up running around leads Donna off to a corner of the yard to talk to herself, leads me to venture into another neighbor’s backyard, where I’m not allowed, to steal stalks of tart rhubarb, and it’s not that I even like the taste of it, I just want it, like I want a lot of things that I don’t have and I can’t get, however, it doesn’t matter, because I don’t care, a new dress doesn’t hide the wild girl that I am, the girl that’s growing up quick, learning the ropes, dealing with the crappy things in life, the things that twist my stomach, that make the fight or flight feeling juiced up in a second, and makes me think that our life’s going to be tough for awhile, maybe longer than awhile, which is confirmed as our wild girls’ fierce shouts in this short childhood time expel forward to the wilder teenage years and to the wild women we become.