cleansing

Bill and I stayed overnight with Dad. I still can't get to sleep very well, so I open the basement window to let some cool air in. Then I hear it - a rustly quiet thumping noise. I don't think much about it, then hear it again in a few minutes - thuh, it sounds like. It sounds like it's coming from the egress window. I turn on the light. I can't see anything, reflected against the window. I shut off the light - now I can't see anything. It's 11:40PM - I go back upstairs - Dad's reading the end of "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress," one of 7 of my favorite all-time books I've brought up for him to read. He gives me a flashlight and I go outside, and shine it down the window well. Okay, I'm a little nervous - you just never know what you'll find - bunny, robber, but there it is, looking right into the window, a little green frog (oh, with yellow spots and a big mouth - Mom's favorite joke!). I sit on the ledge and carefully bend over, with a portable broom and scoop and scoop the little guy into the scoopy thing. I lift him out and place him gently back away from the edge. He takes two hops... BACK into the window well. He must think the well is the lake and the window the water. So I sit back at the edge of the well and repeat the process, then carefully walk him down to the bay's edge and let him go. He just sits there, looking up at me calmly. I go back to bed, and as I lie there, I think, 'this happened TWICE - it must have meaning,' then I think of the Medicine Cards, and how frog means cleansing, and I think I will look that up when I get back to Fargo to see why Frog has hopped into my life at this time. I'm sure it means something, as everything seems to, these days.

I'm anxious to get back to Fargo, to see if we can calm down a little. Steve called this morning, missing us. Maybe everybody's feeling this strangeness these days, as if something has shifted, and nothing will ever be the same again.