A Little Frog’s Heart: The Coming of Age

A Jailhouse Story IV-1

A Jailhouse Story IV

In those moments my soul felt empty. It was like an endless desert, abandoned by all wind gusts, punished for being selfish, going for centuries unsupported by any life forms for as far as the eye can see.

Yes, I was desolate. Inside of me, my conscience seemed to shout in revolt: “Why? Why, God?” My humiliation was absolute. Pain was too great. The suffering was at a peak. It was burning me. For a moment, everything collapsed around me. I sank into darkness, like a blind person. In my head I heard, all of a sudden, the echo of Mother’s words. I imagined her at the end of an ordinary working-day, searching for me so we can go home. Around sunset, when the sun seemed to hide behind the hill, I used to follow it, wanting to see where it went. I was running after it, like a restless little lamb on a spring day, innocently wishing be the master of the plain, to feel the most important one in the flock!

Innocent like a lamb, I was running up the highest hill, close to our land plots. I was climbing it, wanting to see at any cost where is it that the sun goes to sleep at the end of the day. I was confused and undecided. I wanted to put to satisfy the curiosity born out of its mysterious disappearances and reappearances every day. Yet, on the other side, I was thinking that I was too little and too afraid to let go of my family, which I would have dearly missed …

Mother’s voice made even my shadow flinch, interrupting my daydreaming. Mother was scared because she had been looking for me for quite a while and her voice was rough, because she had been calling my name everywhere; her fearful words reached me as if whipped by their own echo! Words rushed to touch my ears, wanting to punish them, to make me wish I had never gone wandering off.

“Gheorghiţă! Hey, Gheorghiţă!” Mother was calling out, short of breath after having looked for me in despondence.

When she saw my shadow trembling on the hill, she told me, happy to have found me:

“Come back, come back quickly! See, the night is closing in, and she comes to steal you! She will take you to her kingdom and you will have to stay there forever to serve her!”

When Mother’s warm and worried voice reached my ear-drums, tickling them, I would turn, frightened. Indeed, the night was getting closer, stooping on the way up the slope: she was carrying a large black bag. She was picking and carefully fitting in all the clouds on her way, clouds that didn’t manage to go away with the daylight, being too large and heavy, burdened with countless water drops. They were waiting for their orders, like soldiers preparing a mysterious baptism of nature, one to be performed in secret. Their design, I don’t know why, made me believe that the night really stole children like me, children lost on the plains in love with the dark clouds. Maybe that’s why they couldn’t break up with them.

The obsession of a kidnapping was clouding my imagination: wasn’t it true that at those covert baptisms, they were planning on giving me as a gift to who knows what? Maybe I was to be given to some strange tree, to keep it company at night, especially when bursting with buds, so as to have someone to admire them?! Well, to be honest I would have liked that! I was cheerfully toying with the idea. Only that a more horrifying question was really frightening me: “What if she were to give me to a starving wolf? No, such a thing was not possible,” I firmly resisted the idea. The night must have a good heart! She hosts many a nature’s blessings.

I had to get to Mother. She was probably right, as always and judging by her frightened voice, she must have been in utter panic!

Mother’s words seemed to have literally spanked my buttocks, making me turn even quicker! I was running so fast, that I was feeling my tiny trousers’ seams bursting because of the too high jumps I was trying to make. I stopped only in Mother’s arms, breathing hard and cuddling at her bosom, where I felt safe. After kissing me hard a couple of times, as if wanting her kiss to be forever stamped on my face, she questioned me:

“My dear, what were you doing on the neighbouring hills, yet again?”

What could I have told her? She had warned me so many times not to fill my head with outrageous desires! Each time I had promised I would listen to her! But I could not keep my promise, because of my stubborn curiosity, much stronger than my fragile wisdom. My curiosity bothered me continuously: if I didn’t obey, it was taking away all my cheerfulness!

And so, because I did not want Mother to scold me, I decided not to tell her of my thoughts regarding the sun’s adventures. Although I had barely grown a few inches and was only a few days older, I already felt more confident and was trying to hide some of the crazy things that passed through my head.

“This day, my dear Mommy, seemed longer than ever…” I was trying to explain in a pleading voice, intended to appease her. “And I was under the impression that she was differently clothed from other days! The train of her dress was so long, that it seemed endless! It even had a special shine, as if sprinkled with diamond drops, whose glittering was winking at me, pressing me to follow her! That’s why I wanted to climb the hill! ” I kept on talking nonsense, wanting to alleviate Mother’s worries.

“Why?” She looked at me with wide open eyes. “I hope you didn’t want to leave me this early, at your age?” She was getting even more worried.

I began to stammer:

“No, no! How could I leave you? God forbid, dear Mother! Without you I wouldn’t even dream of living elsewhere…” I wanted to convince her, but also to stall her in order to find a more convincing answer. “I simply wanted to… well…” I stammered. “I wanted to reach the highest peaks of the day which just ended, to be able to see how large our land was!”

“But why would you need to know how large our land is?” Mother asked.

“I wanted to be able to describe it to the whole world when I grow up and travel the world. Tell other people all about it and pride myself over my homeland’s beauty! ” I was improvising as I was watching the sun go down beyond the line of the horizon.

The hill top I had just climbed down caught my eye: the sun, which had been disappearing behind it, embellished it, creating the image of a volcano. Mother hugged me once more. After kissing me again, even more lovingly than the last time, she told me:

“Sweetie, to get to the highest peaks of light, and there see clearly everything around you, you’ll have to pass through the fire of suffering because light comes directly out of this fire! But it doesn’t come easily: it requires an offering from all those who attempt to conquer it. That’s why I’m telling you it won’t be easy for you: that pain will torment you! But the priceless lessons the suffering will offer you, they are the only ones that can properly equip you for life.” Mother would end her speech with a sigh ripped out of her pure heart.

She had already passed through this fire, and not just once, because she had brought into the world a fair share of lovely witty children. She then took me by the shoulders, and we walked together to the other little siblings waiting for us at home.

So much time has passed since! The memory I was re-living now, sitting in a strange car, might just have been my moment of total abandonment. Only now do I begin to understand the meaning of Mother’s words. Resigned, I only wanted to surprise the suffering, to break the umbilical cord that tied me to it, feeding me poisoned energy, cutting me off from everything that was positive in my life. My consciousness was looking for a drop of light in the abyss that was sucking me in. But I wasn’t after just any drop, I was hunting for the one which appears in the beginning of the day, at the end of myriads of moments, from sunset to dawn, along which, wrapped in the warmth of the translucent rays, it travels the earth from end to end, in the presence of the Morning Star, hidden to us, mortals. Only that drop would have been the one blessed by God, to receive sanctifying power from the Creator. Only that one drop of light, sliding down the hot forehead of a long summer’s day, along its peachy cheeks, could have ‘baptised’ my eyes giving my sight back. A sight and a new vision, to reach out to from the darkness I was in, and get a wisp of hope, embellished with a crystal scarf, weaved out of life’s sparkle. This was the only one to give hope to those unexpectedly hit by the waves of disappointment.

I had abandoned, a long time now, the oppressive atmosphere of the car I was in: I was feverishly looking for that one grain of hope. I was telling myself that, had I found it, I would have picked it up carefully and sheltered it in the brightest corner of my heart, nurturing it as if it were the most fragile flower. In return, the flower would save its last petal for me, as a reward for my gentle care! But it wouldn’t be just any petal! Imagine a pure game of love when, picking up a small daisy in blossom, full of emotion and beautifully innocent, I start to pluck it, petal by petal, wanting to discover the end of a most feverish wait…

Believing in his power to work wonders, this petal (which offered to be the guide of my hope) helped me gather my strength, which, after so many blows, had pitifully lost all will-power, all wish to fight back.

I didn’t want to lose confidence in myself! I refused to let my mind be overwhelmed by the bitterness of despair, not even for a moment: I, and I alone, would have then had to suffer, even more, by empowering those who wanted me down, by making them feel like they’d won.

Still my soul felt empty, burdened with sorrow like a desolate desert stretching far and wide to every corner of the earth. Even so, we knew that the desert, frequently punished by the wind with long absences, is still visited by the wandering wind from time to time. Even on the rare occasion of such a call, courtesy was out of the question! One of the reasons, however, may well have been the fact that the wind couldn’t help to feel pity for the abandoned thistles, wandering here and there on the hot sand, itself punished constantly by the sunbeams. So, no matter for what reason, the wind would visit the desert anyway… It will get closer to the hilltops, knowing that they will always be pleased to see the wind again, it being the only one to caress their dried thighs. Through a charmed whistle, it will whisper only what they could understand, because, if the Desert found out their secret, he would mercilessly punish them! Having a vengeful nature, he would wipe out all the sand dunes with one mighty shake of his scorched body. The malice nestled in his heart; it was a way of retaliating to the feelings of abandonment which never left him…

That is why the Wind will be cautious and will talk to the sandy hills as quietly as possible:

“My dears, your patience and suffering will be eventually rewarded by the immortal Time. He will give you, at some point, a drop of the elixir of life, in which the rest of the earth plentifully rejoices.”

Afterwards the Wind will caress them softly, so that, thrilled by its touch, the sand grains will raise in the air, dancing. Feeling them ready to abandon themselves to him, the Wind would add:

“I too will help the immortal Time and together we will take you over the endless lands! You will get to see many other places on this earth, to share the happiness in their lives!” Thus would the Wind promise, in a flashy smile, to boost their self-confidence.

Full of hope, the sand dunes would do whatever the Wind now told them to, so that his promises may come true. Without hesitation, he will propose a game: a ‘football match’ where, instead of balls, they would use the nearby wandering thistles.