Sometimes A Small Sea of Green is Enough

I hear the sound before the “Uh-oh.” The distinctive suctioning of a sandal wrenched free from reeking pond mud.

“Mommy, you do not even want to see my sandals,” he warns, calling from across the dry bed, cracked uneven in the blistering sun. “You are going to ground me for a week for sure!”

{Like I’ve ever grounded him for a week or even a day. My dramatic, hyperbolic redhead.}

We’re at Pioneer’s Park the day before the start of school, soaking up every last bit of summer possible. Because even though I’ve been counting this day down for a couple of weeks now, it’s still bittersweet. Even for me, my fingers itching for the keyboard as I’ve dashed out words between backyard badminton and afternoons at the city pool.

Rowan wants to catch a frog so we head to the marsh that’s nearly dry after these long weeks without rain. The water has receded so much only a sliver remains, grey and stagnant, grasses on the bank dried to crisp stalks, leaves curled brown.

But as I get comfortable on a bleached log and the boys approach the water’s edge, the forsaken earth jolts into wild life as hundreds of frogs leap. They go off like firecrackers, chiming cheeps and chirps and jumping one after the other in rapid fire, fast and furious in their zest for survival. White bellies glinting in the dazzling sun, they look like sardines flipping wildly on shore. Even the boys, quick in their mud-slogged sandals, can’t capture them, save a single, tiny baby weary of Noah’s pursuit.

Later we rest our chins on the wooden rail and peer into the watering hole as the frogs croak a symphony of groans and the turtles swim silent. We don’t see them at first, but as we stare longer and harder into that green gloom, a world springs to life and suddenly the dismal hole is a plains tidal pool, teeming and swarming and slithering.

Somehow, in this barren, rainless season, when leaves crunch autumn brown beneath our shoes and the scorched front lawn prickles bare feet and the sun beats relentless from the ceaselessly blue sky, hope springs fresh from this small sea of green.


 

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