The Magic of Frogs

by Susan Brown

A tree frog was singing its heart out in the overgrown shrubs near my window this morning. In the Pacific Northwest, it’s not uncommon to hear the symphony of these tiny peepers. But we’ve had a week of freezing temperatures and spring is long gone. 

Yet one frog is still singing.

Maybe it forgot to update its calendar. Maybe there was a wisp of warm air enticing it out from hibernation under its bed of fallen leaves. Maybe the soft buzzing of late insects lured it out for one more snack before sleep. Who knows why, but the frog sat on the near-bare branches and filled the air with melody.

Seasons turn. Creatures around us sleep or slip away. I stock up on comfort food and books, and, prompted by the darkening days, begin to spin hazy stories in the long process of weaving together a book. 

For who?

A writer I follow, who struggles with an auto-immune disease, asked on Facebook about what health challenges her readers faced. So many. So many people mentioned how they coped with handicaps ranging from physical limitations to emotional devastation. And how books allowed them to soar through time and space, to have their difficulties and loneliness eased in the universality of shared stories and dreams. 

Does a frog dream? 

Probably not. But it sings through spring and summer and even into fall, despite the cold and dark. As do so many of us – because it’s the best we can do.

But unlike the frogs, we have our universal consciousness carried in centuries of books. Connections that flow from one mind to another, unbounded by time or space, full of passions and struggles for understanding of what it means to be human.

So, we three witches, Sue Old, Linda Jordan and I, offer up our song, such as it is, to light up and warm the dark months that will turn inevitably into the warmth and life of spring. Pull a comfy blanket over your lap, open a story, and dream away in the beauty of the turning of the seasons.