Janet Smith

Mother of the Earth

In a concrete world, what a big city offers? Is an abundance concrete. I’m around the corner of my house in hot southwestern Texas, the scorching El Paso desert where nothing grows but cactus and cockroaches I lived on a corner lot that had a sidewalk in front and on the side of my house. Behind my house was a church on a huge property and it had a baseball field, but not a nice looking field, it was all dirt. As I was squatting down as close as I could, in a three year old little body, looking real close and personal noticing the most curious creature on the porous grey sidewalk which stood out because of its pinkness in color. Later and mostly all grown up I learned that this creature was called "Child of the Earth." It was round like a coin and doughy looking like a biscuit but the most curious thing is that it had an image of a baby face on it. The whole thing, the whole roundness was a baby's face. I must have been not more than 4 inches away with my face and if I were to ever know what this creature was thinking it would be "that's a bigger face than mine." These creatures are poisonous or so I thought for many years. Enough years to feel vexed in lifestyle. I hate bugs. The child of the earth is a bug and the real name is Jerusalem cricket. But I will swear that the bug on the internet called the Jerusalem cricket is not the same bug that I saw that fearful day in El Paso.