The Way it Was My mother stirred something on the coal-stove that smelled so good I squirmed with hunger. Jamie and I were doing  geography.  He wrote The Major Exports of Brazil across the top of a lined tablet. I looked at the map – all those rivers!  "Don't you wish we were on a boat on the Amazon? We'd stretch warm in the sun with monkeys and parrots in the trees and fruit falling into the boat from overhead and fish we could almost catch with our fingers?"   Jamie said think what else might fall into that boat, suppose it was an anaconda, did I want to be squeezed to death? And if fruit really did rain down, which he doubted , how would we know what was poisonous and what we could eat?  Now, name the major exports of Brazil – but just then we heard father stamping snow off his boots in the back porch, and mother hurried to set that pot of delicious smells in the middle of the table. Lois Hayna

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