Frog Legs and Tales
She sits on the floor with legs folded at her sides. When sleeping, she adapts this position by lying on her tummy. This is my daughter Nicole, also known as The Frog. Now frog legs and tales seem to leap in and out of my life, that capturing them in one place makes sense. Preferably in a pond.
We once had a lush, tropical garden. The overgrown hibiscus whose top-heavy branches bent down in an arch was my favorite hiding place. Then there was the Dama de Noche - lady of the night - which bloomed every evening with a sweet, heady fragrance, but curled up in sleep by day. And there was the Chinese bamboo, which rustled and rattled in the wind.
One windless afternoon, something swished through the bamboo. Fearing a snake, I ran for cover in the kitchen. Beside the bamboo stood an old covered drum we used for collecting rain water. As I looked out, that thing flew from the bamboo stalks and landed on the drum. It was a tree frog.
In time, a succession of tree frogs came to live among the bamboo. But one day, our house was renovated, and the bamboo was cut to make way for the repairmen. Afterwards, I never saw a tree frog in our garden again.
Years later, I was riding a bus when it stopped at a red light. A yellow car stood beside us, and a frog was clinging to its roof. As the light turned green, we drove alongside each other. The frog hopped a few steps, but the rushing wind blew it back to the edge. This happened again and again, until our bus pulled over at last. I lost sight of the car with the frog on its roof.
But the earliest frogs I recall were black, brown and of rubber. They belonged to my brother Eric, who also had a vile-looking snake to match. I was two and repelled by the snake, so he let me play with the frogs. I named them Kokak and Kakok.
When frogs talk, they croak. But "croak" doesn’t really mean anything, except mimic the way frogs sound. Such words are called onomatopoeia, and most languages in the world have it. Hence, frogs "croak" in English, say "kokak" in Tagalog, and "quak" in German. The latter term causes problems across cultures and species because ducks say the same thing in English.
Onomatopoeic words can also get complicated, as I found out while studying literature. While reading Aristophanes’ play "The Frogs", I discovered that the most cryptic lines in the history of Greek drama are: "Brekekekekek, koax, koax. Brekekekekek, koax, koax."
That’s frogspeak in old Greek, in the English translation.
________
* Essay sent to the 2005 Erma Bombeck Writing Competition
We once had a lush, tropical garden. The overgrown hibiscus whose top-heavy branches bent down in an arch was my favorite hiding place. Then there was the Dama de Noche - lady of the night - which bloomed every evening with a sweet, heady fragrance, but curled up in sleep by day. And there was the Chinese bamboo, which rustled and rattled in the wind.
One windless afternoon, something swished through the bamboo. Fearing a snake, I ran for cover in the kitchen. Beside the bamboo stood an old covered drum we used for collecting rain water. As I looked out, that thing flew from the bamboo stalks and landed on the drum. It was a tree frog.
In time, a succession of tree frogs came to live among the bamboo. But one day, our house was renovated, and the bamboo was cut to make way for the repairmen. Afterwards, I never saw a tree frog in our garden again.
Years later, I was riding a bus when it stopped at a red light. A yellow car stood beside us, and a frog was clinging to its roof. As the light turned green, we drove alongside each other. The frog hopped a few steps, but the rushing wind blew it back to the edge. This happened again and again, until our bus pulled over at last. I lost sight of the car with the frog on its roof.
But the earliest frogs I recall were black, brown and of rubber. They belonged to my brother Eric, who also had a vile-looking snake to match. I was two and repelled by the snake, so he let me play with the frogs. I named them Kokak and Kakok.
When frogs talk, they croak. But "croak" doesn’t really mean anything, except mimic the way frogs sound. Such words are called onomatopoeia, and most languages in the world have it. Hence, frogs "croak" in English, say "kokak" in Tagalog, and "quak" in German. The latter term causes problems across cultures and species because ducks say the same thing in English.
Onomatopoeic words can also get complicated, as I found out while studying literature. While reading Aristophanes’ play "The Frogs", I discovered that the most cryptic lines in the history of Greek drama are: "Brekekekekek, koax, koax. Brekekekekek, koax, koax."
That’s frogspeak in old Greek, in the English translation.
________
* Essay sent to the 2005 Erma Bombeck Writing Competition
posted by Maria-Fe Parco Ortner at 5:02 PM
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