I can imagine all the calm focused mothers whispering to each other in the street: Protect your children don’t send them to the Lavons.

T he Day of Mud does not begin with mud. It begins with a perfect moment splashed upon the fabric of time nestled deep within the warmth of summer. Birds trill from thick leafy trees a white butterfly meanders the fragrant green grass lulls me into a sleepy state of harmony.

I am chatting with a friend in my garden about something wonderfully adult like buying an extra freezer. Somewhere in my mind I wonder which cake I’ll bake later on for my husband to take along to a siyum. The kids are playing nicely somewhere beyond our peripheral vision but close enough that no one would accuse us of neglect.

We breathe in the quiet peace in greedy gulps debate size and make and model and if an extra freezer is really a necessity if the money could go toward a new sheitel.

And that is how the mud part begins. With a distracted mother (probably how most mud parts begin). A focused mother would sense the evil lurking beneath the façade of such a lovely day. A focused mother would step outside hear the trill of the birds narrow her eyes at the meandering butterfly and proclaim firmly “I don’t trust you Day.” A focused mother would not allow her four-year- old to unravel the garden hose and slowly inch toward the large patch of dirt at the edge of the yard. She would reprimand in a calm focused mother voice “No sweetie.” And the four-year-old would immediately drop the hose and say “I’m terribly sorry Mother. Forgive my lack of thought.”

Alas I am not her. We have moved on to the malevolence of margarine and I am riveted by this conversation with a human over four feet tall. I’m too distracted to notice the tiny person dragging the garden hose across the grass. Too distracted to watch the dirt transform itself into something wholly uncontainable. And by the time I am undistracted it is too late — her hands are caked her face glowing in gooey wet ecstasy.

My heart plummets. The neighbors! And the other kids playing here and the people and the rules! Mud is bad! It is the destroyer of all things clean! Clean things are good! My friend gathers her children at once leaves quickly.