Dirt

by Anna Kunnecke

The kids are coming home from preschool with bags and bags of damp laundry.  The clothes are filthy, covered in mud, and quickly turn rank and sour.  But I don't mind it one bit.  There is great delight in knowing that my daughter is spending great gobs of time in her natural state, which is to say covered in mud, leaves, sticks, sand, bugs, and water.   There is equal delight in having her returned to me every day washed clean, damp hair tied up in a tiny ponytail, fresh and clean and ready to walk home.

I'm telling you, this preschool stuff?  It's the secret to the universe.  

I am happy that she gets dirty, and I would be happy to participate in it about once or twice a week.  But I am happiest of all that she gets absolutely filthy almost every day, and I only need to be involved...well...once or twice a week.  

As far as I can tell, this dirtiness is all part of the plan at hoikuen (preschool).  There is a sense of entitlement in Japan when it comes to childhood, a belief that little kids are not just allowed but almost obligated to run around like hellions, dig in the dirt, and get filthy.  It's considered one of the sweetest phases of life, this time when you can run free and make a mess of yourself, and I can't help but wonder if the poignancy comes from knowing that such freedom will be short-lived.  The day they start first grade, they'll be marching to a different beat, and it will include mops and brooms.  

In any case, there are a lot of preschool activities that have to do with dirt.  There is the ceremonious making ofsunadango, (balls of sand, folks, just balls of sand) which is a playground rite of passage that apparently hasn't slackened since I was in kindergarten about a thousand years ago.  Then there is the yearly digging for sweet potatoes, imo hori, and the attendant mud communing.  There's the planting of the seeds, and the watching them grow, and the gleeful picking of the green thing that sprouts and eating it.  In the city, we don't take much for granted.  Food popping up out of the ground?  Now that's some serious magic.

Even the daily noon meal is hooked into the larger idea that food is connected to dirt.  Each day, the teachers set out a tray laden with a serving of that day's lunch under a neat glass box so that parents can see what their kids are eating.  Next to the tray is a little basket full of leafy carrot tops, onion peels, zucchini stems and sandy spinach roots.  In other words, it's clear to see, somebody made this meal from vegetables that were pulled right out of the ground, not too long ago, and not too far from here in the scheme of things.  It's so rooted, so connected, and so earthy, sometimes I get a little misty.