HOMEBODIES

        When summertime waved its small yellow flag, signaling summer, a group of frogs would crowd around my family’s JC Penny’s lamp in the living room of our suburban Michigan home. They were still outside, separated by the large windows. We had huge panes of glass that spanned the back of our house: the whole backyard was on display. We didn’t have blinds, so we were barely separated from the outside. The frogs ranged from pale green to gray and were all about the size of a half-dollar coin. We just saw their soft bellies and their bulbous fingers.

        They weren’t incredibly active. The clump of them would freeze as the sun took away their natural light. It would first be one, and soon more would follow. They would only ever go to this one spot. We had other lamps along the same wall, but this was the only one that they would visit. This was their hometown bar—they all knew one another, and they didn’t care if it was a low-brow department store lamp, because it was their low-brow department store lamp. My parents had recently redecorated, donating much of our old furniture. The famous lamp was no longer there.

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        My Grandma would stay with us for Memorial Day Weekend to celebrate our birthdays, mine was two days after hers. It was usually around this time that the first frog would emerge, sticking itself by the window frame, cautiously basking in the artificial light. In a few weeks’ time, there would be a whole family of them. The parents would leave the tadpoles behind with a babysitter in the small pond behind our house.

        The frogs have continued to come each summer, even though my Grandma could not. I wonder if they missed her. With her poufy, dyed-red-hair-to-match-my-own, and her color-coordinated sweat suits. And, her common exclamations of “Oh, boy!” and “Oh, Lordy Lordy.”