The Princess and the Frog

The screech came up from the basement with the tone and volume every Mom recognizes as a 911 cry. The allspice I was measuring dropped to the floor and I raced to the sound of her voice, my feet barely touching the steps. I was ready for anything, blood, fire, or perhaps one of the deer we saw last evening running amuk through the basement.

“Mom”, she screeched, “There’s a frog!! It’s on the computer plug. Oh God, I touched it!!” There were more explanation points that that, but you get the gist of the situation. Relieved, I did my best heroine routine, wondering how the child I introduced to bugs and snakes at such a young age developed this girly thing about tiny terrified creatures. She was standing there pointing toward the wall plug and looking like the child I remember waking in the middle of the night with a bad dream. Fetching a cloth from the ragbag as to not injure the sensitive creature, I picked up the half dollar size green frog from the top of the plug where it sought shelter and carried it outside. I asked her if she wanted to see it before I let it go but she answered with an emphatic, “No!”

I left him sitting there by the flowerpot, eyes adjusting to the sunlight and body coming up to the temperature of the warm morning. Exposed, he is such a small monster, but like the ones in my daughter’s long ago nightmares, he achieved mammoth proportions in her imagination.

Back upstairs I pick up the spice jar from the floor and go back to the task of making carrot cake, happy to still be useful to my oh so grown up daughter. Although the storms are never completely over between us, we navigate this mother daughter thing deftly, acknowledging our very different personalities and delighted to find we have much in common regardless. Despite her fear of tiny scurrying and hopping things, I have never known a braver soul. She has endured and grown stronger with each blow that would have destroyed a less resilient person. 

I look for an end to this story, a moral, but I am too close to see one. This priceless relationship began the day she was born and will not end, even when I am gone. I live as long as she lives, as long as she remembers, as long as there are noises in the night.