The summer I turned fifteen we moved near Cathcart Lake. Next to the lake is a greystone mansion. Our new neighborhood kids told us that ‘crazies’ live in the mansion. But since my sisters and I never saw anybody crazy there, or anybody at all for that matter, I do mean anybody—ever—it wasn’t really a scary place to be.
In fact, just the opposite. When I was scared, or lonely (which was a lot), I walked to “The Lake” as we called—still call it. I would take a silver birch walking stick and poked the edges of the lake with it. That stirred up the dark smell of wet moss. This calmed me.
I would lie on my stomach and peer down into the water, watching the tadpoles dart and zip. And sometimes I collected them in mason jars, took them home and watched them grow. I watched those mason jars, day and night, and saw the tadpoles drop their tails off, their eyes get way, way bigger, saw their arms and legs grow, and turn greener everywhere.
I would think about how they probably didn’t know, when they were still under the lake water, before their mason jar travels, that there was a bigger world out there. And I’d think maybe I too was a kind of tadpole, or a frog, and there is for me too, a much bigger, unseen world out there.
One day, sitting on the corner of my parents’ double bed, afraid to look them in the eye, and pulling on a white chenille bedspread ball, I asked them if they thought it might be true—that we are all just like tadpoles in a pond and we don’t even know it.
That was the one time I ever remember seeing them smile affectionately to each other.