Two Tales from Childhood

Fairyland


The willows draped rusty strands over the ditch on Braefoot Road, in the time before curbs and culverts, when water ran openly roadside, a hurdle for jumping kids. I guess the gurgle of water must have filled the gaps between the hum of cruising cars, the Sunday drivers. Those were the let’s-go-for-a-drive days, the five-dollar fillup days, when the car was family recreation, when moms and kids would pile in for pleasure, nowhere to go, no scheduled games, just beachside forest, corn fields, oak splattered rock faces, there to be appreciated.

She’s twelve, a climber now for years, her favourite place the treetops, and here in the muddy grove they call Fairyland, she’s alone for once. Haphazard boards climb the stout trunk of the oldest willow tree, and she scales them catlike, skinny limbs strong and sure, hand over hand to the heavy horizontal branch that houses the fort, a simple plank platform. Someone’s dad must have invaded this space at some point, to hammer the boards so well, but it’s been a long time since adult touch has fouled this place. She perches on this high nest, revels in precious solitude, eyes watchful of the strangers as they pass below, unaware, her cougar stare.





King’s Pond


In spring the jellied strings of frog eggs slimed the surface of the little lake at the end of Ascot Drive. We’d foray there every weekend till the tadpoles were born, and then, with homemade nets and pickle jars, we’d capture those bulbous-headed fishy things, set them in our bedroom windows, watch them sprout buds of limbs, the back ones first, the front, the tail shrinking, till the unmistakable character of Frog became evident. These were tree frogs, jelly-toed, bright lime, small, weightless. All the neighbour kids - David and Sydney and Jill and me - we all released our collections at the same time, the jars no longer adequate for dozens of jumping critters. The song those nights, then, of the frogs, close and rich, filled our sleepy heads, our very own lullaby. Our dreams were loud with frogsong, our walk across the lawns alive with springing green. But Saturday the dads went out and mowed the grass, and that was the end of the singing.