A squishy and inviting stretch of mudflat lay where there is usually water lapping at sand. It turned out that kiddo, dogs, and I had arrived at the beach at an extra low tide–what a treat! An hour later, the white dogs were brown. I was muddy to my shins, and Em was muddy to her knees. After a cursory wipe (and gratitude for my trusty home-made seat cover) the fun was over, and we piled ourselves back in the car to head home.

There was a time when I thought that playing in the mud with my daughter would be the most natural thing in the world–and, yesterday, it was. But I have had to work on my relationship with mess a lot more than I expected.

I always knew I wanted to be a mother, but I didn’t think a lot about what that would look like. In fact, the only daydream I can remember, from before my daughter was born, was really just a single image–an idea like an old photograph, looked at so many times it burns into my memory. I envisioned a little blond girl, wearing a grubby white shirt, sitting on the ground and grinning. She had been playing in the dirt, so her face and hands and chubby little legs were all dirty. Yes, my goal was to raise a little mud baby. “Dirty kids are happy kids,” was what I figured, based on my own childhood running around in the woods.

Then, parenthood actually arrived. And so did the endless cleaning. Faces, hands, dishes, tables, floors, clothes. Every palm joyously smacking into spaghetti sauce, or paint, or mud, or pancake batter, made me cringe: I immediately saw more cleaning. All those little splatters. Mine, all mine, to clean up. I was soon urging restraint on my little wild creature–often when none was necessary. The shirt was going to be washed anyway. Wiping up the floor only takes a minute. I am NOT suggesting that a child should do whatever she pleases, at any time. And a mama setting limits that help keep her sane is a really good thing. But that’s not what this was: instead, my desire for order had grown outsized, lost all sense of proportion, and was depriving my little one of all sorts of tactile, sensory, joy and learning.

And so, I began to battle myself. To bite off the word “no” and give myself a second to ponder the actual consequences, and let the small stuff slide. I also started making sure that I said “yes” to more extravagent mess, at least some of the time. And allowing myself to join in and play too–deliberately setting aside the constant stream of worry.

When I was a child, my parents’ friends lived right by a salt marsh. Low tide revealed great muddy channels, incised among spiky islands of marsh grass. My parents would let me roam this maze for as long as I wanted.  Even now, I can vividly remember what it was like in that hushed, slick universe of mud: briny smell of salt, walls of the channels rising taller than me, towering tufts of grass, close cry of blackbirds, the sharp intrusion of small shells under my bare feet. The feeling of my body navigating this new landscape: feet sinking, hands scrabbling, mud gooshing out from between fingers and toes. I rolled in the mud. I painted my face, my hair. I chased crabs and flotsam. When I came finally came in, I was never chided. An adult would hose me off in cold water, and then take me inside and dump me in a bath. I have no idea what happened to whatever I was wearing. It wasn’t a thing I knew to worry about.

I am striving to give my own daughter the same gift.