a girl and a deer

This is the 3rd installment of a series of posts about my Childhood... I am following a blog hop challenge...from
Janna from Piggy Tales... Go there to read more...http://mommyspiggytales.blogspot.com

  It was an unseasonable warm day in March, black-eyed pansies looked up at me and smiled... I was outside my grandmother's home...Exploring nature. I went in the front door to see what my grandmother was doing.. she was usually weeding the bricks in her courtyard. Today was her birthday and she was inside her sunlit kitchen baking herself a cake. I was in 1st grade, and I remember thinking it was funny she was making her own cake. My grandmother did not bake often.  My aunt Bonnie and My Uncle Steve were living with us for awhile, why weren't they making her a cake.? My aunt and uncle had a large dog that stayed with us, he was standing begging for something... As my grandmother took out her flour, eggs, butter and sugar. 
  My grandmother began to sift her flour and mix her ingredients. I sat quietly and watched... She poured the batter in her pan and used and old spoon to smooth the top. She pulled open her olive green colored oven door and looked at me,  she said, "It won't be done for awhile if you want to go back outside."
  I took the hint, and when outside near a big pile of gravel that had been dumped the day before by a dump truck. I had been playing on top of it since it's arrival. I sat on top and looked at the tennis court, it was a stone dust court... and I thought I heard something rustle in the court, it was hard to see from the privet hedges  that covered the outside of the court.
  I began to play.. I too got involved... sifting, and cracking eggs for my gravel pie... I felt a light breeze move in as I began quietly talking to myself about my baking.

..I would spend hours inside my grandmother's front room on rainy days... mixing dirt or sand into different recycled containers, that my grandmother saved for me. I made up menus, stories, and customers. If I was not inside baking I was outside baking.. So here I was outside... alone on a giant gravel pile... My uncle hopped in his convertible with his wife and his dog and yelled see you later.

Next my grandmother came out to check on me and told me she was going to the front of the house to weed.  Alone again-- I got to work...
I could do this activity for hours, the breeze again whispered past my ears it left a peaceful calm in the field.. When I dumped in a bunch of clovers into a plastic bowl.. I wiped some gnats away from my head and smelled the new cut grass that my grandmother had mowed earlier today on her riding mower. When I turned my head there less than a foot away from me was a fawn. Standing next to the gravel pile... Looking up at me. I was afraid if I moved a muscle it would run. I put my hands slowly down and stretched my arm to pet it... It did not run.. It did not move. I looked into it's big brown eyes.. A tingling feeling ran down my back..

This was the best feeling. I was one with a real living wild creature... Just then I jerked as all of a sudden I heard the sound of a car on the gravel driveway... My uncle was returning... The fawn stood still. I froze. My uncle let his dog jump out of the convertible and head right for the fawn and me. The fawn glanced at me sadly and shot off towards the end of the meadow that began the forest, with Charlie took off after the poor thing. I was so angry. I wanted that moment with the deer to last longer. I began crying and yelling. My grandmother came running, I sat on my gravel cake... crying... and telling her.. about my moment with the baby deer. She hugged me and said, "Oh, that dog can be such a nuisance." I shook my head  agreeing.