Parents watch children grow up like weeds. When I watched Olivia, the oldest of my three daughters, receive her diploma at my Alma Mater, the University of Mississippi, memories flooded back.
Just a memory ago, she and her tiny-tot friends, ribbons in hair, strutting in their moms’ oversized shoes and dresses, faces smeared with makeup, were blowing out candles at a birthday party. Just a memory ago, she tried to convince me that enough junk to fill up a whole house would fit in a tiny dormitory room.
Blinking moist eyes, I watched my child cross the same stage I had crossed years ago, diploma in hand, striding confidently toward her future, knowing so much from her studies and so little about the real world. I knew she would learn.
All life is learning. I’ll never forget a lesson Olivia learned one Independence Day when she was three years old.
I am unabashedly patriotic. I love America with all my heart, and daily I thank God for one of the greatest blessings any man could ever receive: the blessing of being born an American. When I managed my father’s Mississippi Delta farm, everything came to a halt on Independence Day. The farm hands and I celebrated.
We were passionate volleyball players, and had built a court under huge shade trees. There, we fired up the grills, cut watermelons, set off fireworks, and played endless games of volleyball while celebrating America’s birthday.
When parents weren’t participating, they lounged with the children on the sidelines. Of my three kids, Olivia was by far the most inquisitive. Everything aroused her insatiable curiosity.
On this July 4th, having eaten her fill of barbecue, baked beans, potato salad and watermelon, she sprawled on a blanket, sound asleep. We thought.
The game was tied and approaching the deciding point. Besides spiking the ball at each other with murderous intent, we opponents hurled insults back and forth across the net. It was as close to war as friendly competition gets, and the cheering, booing spectators were locked in rapt attention.
Olivia awoke, and so did her curiosity. With renewed appetite, she decided to partake of Nature’s bounty. Spying a colony of mushrooms, which in her little girl’s lisp were “sroons,” she filled her plate.
The game ended and we exhausted players headed for the coolers. I noticed Olivia, sitting cross-legged, her tiny table set, complete with napkin, paper plate, plastic fork, knife and cup, merrily humming a tune as she carved into an amorphous glob the color of a dead fish’s belly.
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“Olivia! What in God’s name are you eating?” I shrieked.
“Sroons — want some, Da Da?” Off to the hospital we sped to have her stomach pumped. The experience frightened her so badly that she has never eaten mushrooms again.
To celebrate Olivia’s graduation day, her family and friends went out to eat. Everyone snickered when she carefully removed the mushroom slices from her salad. Giving us a knowing grin, she said, “No sroons for me!”
Jimmy Reed is an Oxford, Mississippi resident, Ole Miss and Delta State University alumnus, Vietnam Era Army Veteran, former Mississippi Delta cotton farmer and ginner, author, and retired college teacher.
This story is a selection from Jimmy Reed’s latest book, entitled The Jaybird Tales.
Copies, including personalized autographs, can be reserved by notifying the author via email (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)).
