Brick Factory

Have I written here about the brick factory? Is it a good sign that I have written so many entries that I can't remember anymore what I've written about?

I don't think I've covered this, but in line with my recent thoughts, personal and professional, about the ways in which childhood has changed, I think I will.

The house I grew up in, for the most part, is right on a huge pond, part of which is in the backyard. Where there are ponds, there are swamps, and in the front yard, bordering the field owned by the Wayside Inn, was a swamp, a real one, with skunk cabbage and cat nine tails and mucky mud and flat stones that could be hopped on if one was inclined to fancy one's self in a jungle, escaping from crocodiles, say.

When we were young, on summer mornings that were fine, we would get up, eat something, and run out into the day. If either of us so much as hinted at boredom, my mother would barely look up from what she was doing--schoolwork, gardening, making 500 tiny cream puffs for a wedding--to utter the words: Go outside. And so we went.

And among the other ways we passed our summer days, was the brick factory, an enterprise borne of ingenuity and environment alike, although whose ingenuity--mine, Alison's or our neighbor friend's--I cannot recall. The swamp held a certain allure, partly because it was, well, a swamp. It seemed like somewhere we shouldn't play; I remember thinking even at eight or nine that I would not say I was "playing in the swamp" if asked by an acquaintance at the grocery store. But up close, the swamp held many charms, from the aforementioned skunk cabbage, whose leaves could be ripped in fine shreds like string cheese, to the cat nine tails, who could be incorporated into any number of craft projects, to the large flat rocks, that were customarily used for jumping.

One day, though, one of us, playing in the muck, formed a brick of mud and set it, perhaps inadvertently, on a rock under direct sun. A little while later, the sun had baked the brick hard; it could be picked up, passed around, built with. We were hooked. How it became a "factory" I also cannot say, but I have observed many times since how children, when left to their own devices, have such communal instincts. There were three of us, we wanted to make bricks, and so we did it together.

This I remember: the feel of the slick yet slightly rubbery mud in my small hands, the satisfying smack of hand on mud, the gratifying placement of the bricks in neat rows on the rocks, and the stacking of the baked bricks in a cool spot off to one side, safe from trampling feet.

It will not surprise many of you, I believe, to learn that we never actually used the bricks for building. When we were called inside for a meal or some other irritation, we ran in reluctantly and then back out again as fast as we could manage, leaving the lighter, outside door swinging in our wake. I can still see the sun setting, which is late in high summer in Massachusetts, as we kept up our industry, kept scooping, forming, patting, placing, stacking, shifting roles every so often for a change of view.

And I see, now, that it is so essential, this brick-building time, and the brick building itself, whatever form it takes. But mostly the time.