I remember seeing Papa digging up big trees where he was going to make a field. It wasn't far from our house. Sometimes I would go take him a drink of water. And sometimes Mama would send me to tell Papa dinner was ready. While Papa was drinking his water and resting a bit, I liked to get down in the big hole he dug around the bottom of a big tree. The dirt was damp and cool in the hole. Some of the holes were so big and deep it was hard for me to crawl back out. Sometimes our old surley (bull) was close by and I was afraid of him, so Mama would leave me at the house to watch after Albert while she took Papa a drink. But if the cows were way over in the other side of the pasture, I wasn't afraid to go. I remember our garden just outside our yard. I was big enough to pick fresh beans and peas. The older ones in the family taught me how to break the peas off the vines without breaking the vines. Mama could pick them so easily, with just the right twist of her hands. But I had to hold the vine with one hand while I twisted the peas off with the other hand. I had the smartest Mama. She could do so many things, and she could do them so easily. I especially remember one little incident that took place in our home when I was three. Most of the things I remember from my early childhood have been almost forgotten and I now remember them through special effort and recall. But this one brief moment has lived with me and was never put aside to be recalled later. Mama was sitting in a chair in our living room. Albert was in her lap getting his natural milk breakfast. I was in a hurry for the baby to get through nursing so I could play with him down on the floor. In the meantime, I was standing leaning against Mama and playing with the baby--playing with his hands and feet, rubbing and patting his "tummy," and sometimes tickling him to make him laugh. Now all this activity caused a lot of wiggling and squirming in Mama's lap. And it also caused a lot of letting go of, and getting back to, the baby's morning meal. This kind of playing with the baby might have aggravated some mothers and might have brought a word of scorn, or at least an expression of impatient dissatisfaction from them, but not from this mother. She was one of a kind. She seemed to enjoy it all. She was my Mama. I was standing on Mama's left. When Albert finished and was full, Mama stood him down on the floor on her right. And while he was standing there holding to her dress for support, before Mama put his breakfast away, back into her blouse, she looked over at me and very motherly asked, "Now, do you want some of the baby's milk?" I didn't say a word. I just bashfully backed away a step or so and looked up at her and thought something like, "That's for the baby, not for me."