This is an excerpt from a book I have wanted to write for a long time. Growing up, I loved reading Laura Engalls Wilder's books, and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm... this is a piece similar to those books. It is a true story--my mom and I laughed and laughed as we reviewed the details to refresh my memory. I took this event from my youngest days and wrote it as a story. 

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Alice looked up from sweeping the laundry room. She gazed out the wooden screen door, past the dusty driveway, and down the grassy lane where the farm tractors traveled to the lower fields. Rachael’s blonde head was just coming into view. She was casually wandering back to the house after her morning exploration of the yard and the neighbor’s farm. Being seven months pregnant made it hard to chase two little girls around the house, so Alice had sent them into the yard about 15 minutes ago. Now that she’d gotten the housework started, she could have the girls come back and get some lunch.

After sweeping a few bits of dust out the door, Alice picked up the doormat and stepped onto the wooden back stairs. Only then did she hear the distant wailing of a child. She quickly looked back at Rachael. She still wandered on her way to the house, stopping every once in a while to look back from where she came. Alice looked, too, expecting that Sarah was right behind her. But no. Her second daughter did not appear in the lane or the yard or the driveway.

“Rachael, where is Sarah?” she called nervously.

“Oh, she’s stuck,” she answered complacently in her two-year-old voice.

“Stuck? Stuck where?”

“Over there,” was the reply, with a vague point of the hand. She walked closer to Alice and looked up with her blue, innocent eyes. But Alice scowled. “Rachael, what is she stuck in?” she asked sternly.

“That… stuff. The stinky stuff.”

Telling Rachael to sit on the back step and not move until she returned, Alice took a few quick steps to the end of the yard. She heard the wailing a little clearer. “Sarah! Sarah!” she called.

“Mama!” came the sad reply.

Alice walked as quickly as she could, considering her large abdomen seemed to get in the way of every step. She came to the neighbor’s corral, which lay just a few feet past the driveway. She knew the cows had been moved to pasture now that the summer grasses had started to grow. But that left the corral far from empty—it was filled with a winter’s worth of manure, runny, green and slick. Near the edges the summer heat had begun to harden it into a thick crust—but about five feet out it was still soupy underneath. And that’s where she saw Sarah, stranded up to her ankles.

“Sarah, what have you done?” Alice cried. Sarah looked up with her tear-streaked face, and began to wail louder than ever. Her arms waved in the air, but her feet were immobilized. She tried again to take a step, but the sludge still held her feet and she tottered off balance. She threw her hands in front of her to keep her balance… and now she pulled her hands back in alarm. Green slime dripped from every finger. She cried even louder.

Alice came to the manger. Steel bars divided it into two-foot sections, so the cows could fit their heads through to eat hay but not escape the pen. Two feet is plenty of room for two-and-a-half year old and eighteen-month old girls to fit through—but for Alice and baby number three, it was looking like an impossible squeeze. So she tried to encourage Sarah to come to her. “Come this way, sweetie. Pick up your feet and walk to me.”

Sarah tried again, but all the suction from the manure lagoon was not going to let her feet free. “Mama!” she cried again, reaching out her tiny, dirty hands.

“Oh, my,” muttered Alice. She squatted as low as she could and put one foot through the manger. Her shoe immediately sunk in six inches of crap. “Ugh,” she complained. She twisted sideways, sucked in her belly as tight as she could, and managed to pull the rest of her frame through the metal bars. Now both feet were in the manure. She reached her arms out, but was still not close enough to pick up Sarah. “Come on, baby, come to me,” she called, but Sarah hiccupped and sobbed and seemed more upset that Mom was so close but not close enough.

Resigned to the inevitable, Alice took several slippery, sloshy steps forward. Sarah wrapped both hands around Alice’s legs. Trying not to think about stains and laundry, Alice picked the girl up. Her feet slid out of the mire… but her shoes did not come with them. She glanced down to see the slime slowly running into the space formerly occupied by her ankles. “Wonderful,” she muttered. Sarah grabbed Alice’s shoulder (more stains) and Alice bent awkwardly to the side, fished the shoes out of the corral, and returned to the manger. Placing Sarah carefully outside the corral, Alice again contorted her body in ways a pregnant woman definitely should not, and returned to the safe, dry, dusty ground.

Back at the house, Rachael still sat on the back stairs. Alice noticed then that her shoes were also manure-covered. “Did you go into the corral, too?” she asked.

“Uh huh,” Rachael said. “Sarah got stuck.”

“Yes, I found her stuck out there. Now take off your shoes.” Alice retrieved the hose from the side of the house. A quick backyard scrub up was needed for all of their feet. Then she hung three pairs of dripping shoes on the clothesline. Instead of having lunch, she thought, we’re all going to have baths.

Now that Sarah’s sobbing had subsided, Alice asked, “Why did you go out there?”

“I follow Rachol,” was her timid answer.

“Ah yes, follow Rachael. I should have guessed.” She smiled and chuckled to herself. One thing she’d learned about her two daughters: Rachael always thought she could do anything… and Sarah wanted to follow. Whether for good or bad, Rachael led her sister, her accomplice, her friend, out to find excitement every day.