The Urban Sherpa - a blog by Christopher DeWan

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The Urban Sherpa keeps a collection of stories and curios filed under Mythic Proportions.

The Kingdom of Frogs rating=2

August 18, 2012
File under: Fragments, Mythic Proportions

Frog shadow

During the last week of her mother's life, we sat on the back porch listening to the frogs while they lurked and murmured around our lawn sprinklers. They sang while the sun set, and she and I sat in our matching Adirondack chairs, sipping beer and holding hands and listening.

"It's almost time," she said to me. 

"I know."

"It's for the best," she said, probably to herself. "Or it will be soon."

They weren't bullfrogs. They were small, skinny things, all legs and eyes. They were louder than their little bodies should have allowed, but in a pleasant way, a warm rumble that was comforting, at least to some people, at least sometimes.

While we sat, one of them hopped onto her foot, and stayed, staring up at her with its brown lidless eyes. She didn't flick it off, or even move, and the two of us watched the little frog, waiting like for some nod, some sign, to tell us that all of this—this horrible time during which her mother was no longer her mother but just a broken sick thing, turning to rubbish—that it was over, and she would move on, as we all do, in death, to join the frog, and the kingdom of frogs, a truly better place.

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