Mother's Day

Fifteen minutes ago, thigh deep in meltwater, I felt a kinship with frogs. I’d spent a couple hours at my friend Lauren’s house with her family celebrating Owen’s third birthday. Sunshine, mountain vistas, early spring earth unbound. As always the topic of my spouse and our adoption process came up, and I felt wonder at the sunlit children in Lauren’s kitchen, the small sugary hands and faces absorbing candy after the piñata broke in the field. When I talk about adoption with folks, most everyone asks if we’re going overseas. No, we say, there are enough kids in this country needing families—and there are, but few newborns, and that’s what I want: an infant. I can’t have a baby of my own and I want to have that experience. Then in the future maybe we could adopt a sibling group, older kid with their baggage; but for now, an infant. We’ve been going through the home study process for about nine months now, and hope to be certified by this summer. Then, we’ll see how it goes. I have faith that all will work out somehow.

I left Lauren’s before the birthday cupcakes were served because I wanted a little time in the warm sun on my small front porch. This is the first afternoon warm enough for sitting outside. Each time I sit and read or write I know my days doing this are numbered. As a new mom I won’t be able to relax and read a novel for hours, or obsess over a poem while consuming a cocktail. I know this all will change and so I appreciate it consciously. Lauren’s husband brought out the cupcakes so I could bring a couple home for my spouse and me. The children had selected five colors of icing for the chocolate cupcakes: red, orange, yellow, green, purple. The cupcakes were arranged on a tray with their colors forming diagonal stripes.

I came home and hung up some laundry outside, another first-time-this-year seasonal pleasure. Tonight it may freeze and the maple sap may run, but right now is balmy, sunny bliss. After hanging laundry I intended to come sit on the porch to write this essay about Mothers’ Day, but the chuckling frogs out back seemed to beckon me. I summoned the dog and we set out along the thorny edge of the field toward the wetland at the back of our property.

My beloved and I bought this large old farmstead two years ago knowing that I would never be able to get pregnant and knowing that we planned to fill the place with our children and family. My sister—who is also my best friend—has four kids and lives in a happy mayhem in rural PA with her husband and our mother, who is too sick to live alone any more. Our family will be different than theirs in some ways—we love books and don’t watch TV, while they hunt and have three TVs. If only Pennsylvania and the Adirondacks were connected by a short street. We would create our own town of love.

Spring at our place means the AuSable River roaring out front, the low parts of the meadow flooded out back. The grass is still dead and dry from winter and it shushed as I strode eastward toward the wet area. I sat on a hummock at the water’s edge and listened to the frogs croaking, clucking, thriving. I couldn’t see any. Just the placid water and its world of grasses submerged. Just a few weeks ago this was all frozen, flat and white. We walked along, admiring the stillness and the hardy shrubs. Now it is a maze of tussocks, spiky plants and ripples as invisible things touch the surface of the water. I glanced upstream, into the sun, as my dog huffed and chuffed in the grasses behind me. There was a small thing floating in the water, a shape like this: So small and yet it gave the glassy surface movement. It drifted ever so slowly toward me, and I realized that it was a frog. Then I could see others in the distance, aligned toward me, it seemed, but of course they were facing the precious sun.

I yearned to see a frog up close in the water and so steeled myself for icy cold. I am clumsy and squeamish in the way that city-bred folks can be, but I have a stout heart and a yen for adventure. In I waded, and found the water velvety cool. My skin was protected from mud and ticklish mysteries by thick socks, jeans and sneakers. I laughed for joy: spring! My new home in the country! Some day soon my children will wade in this very swamp, will know it far more intimately that I in this still, sweet afternoon.

The floating frogs vanished when I approached. I was aware of not only my body but also my cold shadow, the ripples my steps caused as I walked deeper, and the cluttered sounds of my playing dog. He is a yellow lab and one would think he’d leap into water, but he’s fussy and not brave. He is also devoted to me, and as the psychic apron string that binds us stretched further he finally plunged in after me.

Soon I saw a frog, one who had seemingly decided to let me approach. Maybe it was a sentry or sacrifice. I stopped and rested my hand on my damp thighs so I could see it better. Delicate little grey thing, with golden eyes above the waterline. The frog could easily have sat in a teaspoon. I cooed to it, praised its little beauty. I was awed by its sturdiness and delicacy there in the water, this creature of season. No matter the snow and ice of the last month or the parched whistle of summer to come—this frog floated in a perfect hour.

I leaned closer ever-so-slowly until I could reach out a trembling pale finger and touch its tiny webbed foot. The frog let me stroke it, and I gently tugged the underwater grass it clutched so its body angled toward me. It was relaxed and aware of me. I stroked its silky skin. But then the frog darted away, legs scissoring into the submerged grass blades. It was gone.

Farther downstream more frogs were making a racket, clucking and splashing. I didn’t hear the frogs we call peepers; perhaps they are for nighttime only. Dozens of frogs on the surface, bobbing and skimming, and one small clutch of them thrashing and splashing. I approached cautiously—body, shadow and ripples sending little frogs into hiding. The knot of struggling frogs remained. I thought they must be mating and wanted to see. Perhaps they were, but the tangle of legs and jaws sank and flitted away before I could get close enough to decipher their activity.

The dog paddled in a long snuffly arc from the grassy bank to my soaked legs, touched his nose to my hand, and swam back to shore. He clambered out and floofed face-first into the dry grass, pushing his snout through the reeds and propelling himself by his hind legs. Drying himself off or scratching, I guess. I made for the bank, knowing that soon I would be too cold to enjoy myself. Behind me the cagey frogs began to cackle.

Then in the net of sunken reeds I saw cloudy blue blooms—frogs’ eggs in giant clusters like dotted thunderheads in the stream. I gazed in delight at this final show, which I never would have seen if I hadn’t ventured out into the flooded channel. Each egg cluster was the size of an orange, pale grey-blue, made up of thousands of black seeds embedded in clear shining protective globules that became visible when I gently lifted them to the surface. I had seen perhaps a hundred celebrating frogs, and here were their progeny, unguarded and incubating in the sun-warmed water.

My own children are somewhere now, too, eggs and sperm in two people, and I play gleefully while they live their lives until the moment we join and become a family.