When I reach the end of the day covered with dirt and tired to the bone, I know I have had a good day.

As a child, I was allowed to run barefoot and free. I stepped on a bee once or twice, but I learned to watch for them. In Pennsylvania, my back yard ran down to a strip of untamed trees and brush that bordered a stream-filled ravine. We loved to pick through the trash, play with the water, and climb the trees. My sister Beverly and I spent happy hours planting sun flower seeds in a neighbor’s corn field, digging with trowels and watering them in with old tin cans. At my paternal grandparent’s farm, we made mud pies using water from a thoughtfully provided washtub. We helped my father in his garden, planting seeds and no doubt stepping on seedlings. When a bird died in our care, I remember that we buried it at the edge of the garden. We dug it up a few days later and found a skeleton swarming with worms and maggots. It must have made quite an impression since I still remember it 65 years later!

Naturally, given my father’s and grandfather’s love of the soil, when I married I encouraged my husband to have a garden. He was gung-ho. The first garden was just a few tomato plants that slowly starved in the subsoil behind our duplex apartment. Later we shared a large garden with neighbors. I loved digging the warm friable soil in the spring, sun on my back, muscles working smoothly to the task. I loved even more placing the seeds and seedlings in the soil, patting the earth firmly around them, so like tucking a child into bed. Sometimes I’d be so tired at the end of the day, I would sit on the kitchen floor, unable to get up to make dinner without a substantial rest.

So when I had children, the biggest gift I could give them, in my opinion, was the joy of playing in the dirt. When they were very young, they were confined to the fenced yard between the house and the garage. We put a three-foot pile of sand in the corner of the concrete tiled patio with a double washtub nearby for water. Oh, the fun we had (me too!) building roads, castles, tunnels and bridges. Now and then I’d let them run the hose to make a river. We had boats, shovels, pails, spoons, sifters, cups, trucks, bulldozers, scraps of wood — all manner of things. We added rocks, sticks and leaves. The constructions grew ever more magnificent.

As the boys grew older, the field of play expanded to the deep forested gully behind the house. It was carpeted deeply in leaf mold and featured a small stream and pond in the wet months — fodder for dams and bridges on a larger scale. They had low-slung riding toys call Big Wheels, perfect for roaring down the hills between the trees. Soon the hill featured “jumps” constructed by my older son Curtis. He loved to build things. The ramps were made of found rocks, old logs and lots of dirt. My younger son Eric loved riding down the ramp full speed standing up, feet on the seat, hands on the handle bars, soaring off the ramp but almost never falling off the Big Wheel. He was a marvel of coordination and balance.

They also explored back in the woods, finding salamanders under logs, thumb-sized grubs in an old tree stump, and many wiggly creatures under the bark of fallen trees.

Bob and I also built a play gym, a real labor of love. But my favorite was a sling-seated swing hung from a board at least 10 feet up between two towering pine trees. That swing had a huge arc; one could really soar into one’s day dreams on that swing. I can still picture a three-year-old Curtis silhouetted against the sky the time I pushed so hard he sailed off the swing at the end of the arc. That was a heart-stopping moment! Fortunately the deep bed of leaves saved the day.

Needless to say, the end of the day always required a bath for all concerned, plus a quick mop of the kitchen floor, which had developed a mottled patina of dirt embedded in the spilled juice of the day. The bath was a beloved ritual for my boys. I provided them with not only boats and water wheels, but also bowls and spoons to be used on the tub seat suspended across the middle of the tub (better than using the edge of the tub with the inevitable bowl of water knocked onto the floor).

I have found over the years that my love of dirt is not universally shared. When my sister brought her children to play at my house, she complained of the indelible dirt stains on the knees of her daughter’s pink overalls. “Good grief, put her in blue jeans when you come here,” I admonished her. How could I deprive her brood of the joys of dirt, which they loved as much as I did?

Now I find my daughter-in-law also lacks my level of enthusiasm. They have a little plastic frog sand box on the closed in deck. They are not allowed to get the sand wet. They also have on the deck a water table I bought them that they love. They are not allowed to put sand or dirt in it. They rarely play in the yard. She worries about snakes hiding in the leaves and brush. I suppose she has a point. We don’t have poisonous snakes in Massachusetts, but they do in Alabama. She does let them dig in the garden sometimes.

At home, they rarely have baths. They get home from work/child care at 6:30. After the meal, the children enjoy some free play while the parents clean up the kitchen and review schoolwork. Then all three need teeth brushed and flossed and want at least two books before sleep. Hard to get all that done by the 8 p.m. bed time, so they get a quick shower with the parents in the morning before school. I guess it’s a good thing they aren’t usually mud hogs at the end of the day.

So, on the rare occasions when they come to my house, I take them out back to play in the stream, chuck rocks in the pond, peel the bark off the dead trees, and saw down saplings with my pruning saw. Maybe I’ll buy them Big Wheels for next year. And, of course, they will need a bath. I wonder where I put that tub seat…