Frogsong

Around February, something wonderful happens where I used to live.  The frogs in the ponds around my old house used to sing for their loves.  Every year, just like magic, the nights went from a silent, cold winter repose to a cacophony filled with the voices of lovelorn amphibians.  I knew this, I anticipated it.  The years it happened earlier were warmer.  The years it happened later, when the frogs sang in mid to late March, tended to be colder with snowy winter days.  I called this time “Frogsong,” and I would celebrate it like an old pagan celebrating anything that had to do with the seasons’ changing.  I was even known to bake a cake for it.

Right now my heart is a little frog.  It is singing for its friends.  It is singing for its home.  It is singing for Vashon Island. 

It sings for Angela, and it sings for Welch. 

It sings for my little pottery studio (even if I never used it). 

It sings for my surrogate sister and her family. 

It sings for Thriftway’s lunch room, it sings for the Deli, for sweet Bell and Judy; and Katie's shy glances.    

It sings for old apple trees and salty sea breezes. For all the babies booming like blackberry seeds.  

There are a thousand and one things that my heart is chirping for and I miss everything: lost deli brothers, and knitting Christmas hats; saxophone players, horse riders, and motorcycle mechanics; cupcake friends and clandestine trips to the mainland at night; a two mile dog walk around my old loop, and my little black cat back home on his stoop (he has to make do with city kitties now.  I wonder if his heart yearns for our old home, too). 

Maybe I need to make my heart a cake.  After all, I used the heart shaped pans to make the frog in the first place.