Froggy Memories

Some of my earliest memories involve writing. 

I grew up spending summers at the pool. My brother and I were both on our neighborhood swim team, and every morning in the summer, we would pedal our bikes the mile from our house to the pool at the front of the neighborhood for swim practice. 

The neighborhood was built around a golf course and country club, and we’d sneak onto the cart paths and coast the rolling hills to the pool, which was nestled behind the club house. We’d park our bikes among the carts and then head over to the pool for early morning practice. 

Especially early in the season, the water was frigid first thing in the morning, but within a few laps, my body would acclimate, and I’d skim through the water, unbothered by the chill. By the end of each season, my skin was tanned to gold, and I lived most of the year with racerback straps burned onto my shoulders. 

We lived in Lowcountry South Carolina, which meant our hometown was prone to hurricanes. We were far enough from the coast to avoid major damage, but every time a big storm swept through, the street in front of our house would flood until the meager storm drains caught up. 

One summer, after a particularly nasty storm, my brother and I pedaled to the pool on the cart paths, avoiding felled branches and muddy puddles. When we arrived, it was soon apparent that there would be no swim practice that day. Only a handful of swimmers were at the pool, and our coach stood on the deck, fishing around in the pool with one of the long-handled skimmers. 

The water was filthy. And green. It looked like it had been filled with lake water overnight. Leaves and debris bobbed on the surface of the choppy water. 

With a handful of swimmers ready for practice, our coach couldn’t turn us away, so she put us to work. Every skimming net was brought into service, and we fished out larger debris with our bare hands. But after a few minutes, it quickly became clear that there was more than debris in the pool. It had become infested with amphibians. 

As we disturbed the water, the creatures began to flee. Frogs and toads hopped around the deck, searching for safety, and we shooed them through the gaps in the metal fence, back into the grass. 

A deep croak echoed through the pool, and I searched for the sound. By that point, we’d gotten most of the debris out of the pool, and I didn’t see any other frogs. But the croaking continued. I followed the sound to a drain on the deck. I pulled the plastic drain cover open and found the largest frog I’d ever seen sitting in the little cave embedded in the deck. 

It was easily the size of a dessert plate. Its squishy body filled out most of the alcove, and I quickly realized that it had somehow gotten itself into the drain but couldn’t get out. With help from my friends, we wrestled it out of the hole and delivered it to a patch of grass outside the pool fence, hoping it would be able to reunite with its family. 

A yell turned our attention back to the pool. We ran back across the deck to find our coach wrangling something into her net. It thrashed, its weight putting a bend in the net’s pole, as she drew it from the water. A snapping turtle. With help from our assistant coaches, they deposited it in the woodline a safe distance from the pool. 

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Back to writing. 

I was probably between the ages of seven and nine when this happened, and I already had a passion for writing. I sat down at my mom’s desktop computer, opened a new Microsoft Word document, and wrote the story of plucking frogs from the swimming pool. I printed it out, added some illustrations, and bound it in a folder with a plasti cover.

My mom, who is one of my biggest supporters to this day, encouraged me to give it to my swim coach, so we walked a few blocks to my coach’s house. I remember ringing the doorbell, and she answered in her usual khaki shorts, polo shirt, and sun visor. She accepted the gift enthusiastically. 

I don’t remember my coach’s name, and I wonder if she kept my gift. At the time, it felt like I’d written my magnum opus.

Twenty years later, I know that it wasn’t my best work. It was a fun memory I put into words as a child, and it’s a fun memory I’m putting into words now. 

But I think it sticks in my memory because it’s one of my first memories of sharing my writing. It was when I started to share my heart on a page, and I had no idea that I would be doing the same thing years later. 

As I look back on the past twenty years, there are many examples of how writing—mine and others’—has brought people into my life and changed me for the better.