We’re rushing this afternoon, whispering encouragements to the pork to finish braising, washing bowls and spatulas as quickly as we dirty them, slamming utensils back onto their shelves and racks as fast as possible.  There are more important places to be than prepping in the cafe when the light is like this, when the temperature is like this…when the peepers are like this.

I look at my phone as we lock the door behind us.  4:15.  Perfect timing.  We drive home, pop open the back of Ol’Blue, and all three dogs race to leap up and take their places.  I grab rum and apples, walnuts and cheese, a bottle of water for Ula.  Bob tosses the Crazy Creek chairs in, and we set off for Rossman Pond.

This afternoon, it’s all about those spring peepers, letting their sweet music wash away winter stagnation.  It doesn’t really matter what we eat or drink, I’m certain we could live on the sound alone.

We get down to the water and set up our listening picnic.  I lean back and close my eyes and I am instantly transported back in time, if not so much in place.  …I’m a child out in the yard at the farm, hustling after my brother with an empty peanut butter bucket in hand, intent on one more specimen collecting adventure in the swamp before Mom and Dad order us in for supper and bed.  I’m sitting down on Ruth’s front porch steps, taking a few moments to listen with her and Sanford before racing home ahead of the dark.  I’m riding my bicycle down to West Fulton just before dusk, simply to pedal through the peeper tunnels — certain spots on the route along the field edges where their songs grow most intense.  I’m pushing my bed up against my bedroom window, pressing my ear to the screen, lulled to sleep by their calls.  I’m staggering out to the woodpile at home, escaping my daughters’ early childhood chaos just long enough to let the frog songs wash over me and restore my soul.

And now, finally, I am here in this moment, connected to that past simply by the rhythms of their chorus.  

But Ula’s in the future.  As the songs of the peepers cascade around us, she dreams out loud.  Tonight she’s imagining a future as an electric violinist.  Quite possibly the lead in a band.  She’ll be on a world tour.

“But you get anxiety attacks every time we go away,” I remind her.

“I haven’t had one of those in over a year,” she answers.

“We haven’t gone anywhere in over a year,” Bob points out.  

“It won’t be a big deal, because I’m not going to do it forever,” she explains.  “Just a little while.  Then I’ll come back here to run the farm.  I’ll still give concerts, though.”

As she talks, my attention drifts.  I close my eyes, imagining the songs of the peepers can wash over my hair, soak in to my skin, quench a thirst and hunger that grew over the winter months.  

But she keeps talking.  “I don’t think I’ll have anxiety traveling, because my band will feel like my family.”  

I want to shush her, tug her into the moment, gently smooth my hand over her face, closing her eyes.

There is a concert here, now, I want to say.  Don’t miss this music. Be here.  In the moment.

But I don’t.  Just as the peepers transport me to my past, they are transporting her to dreams of her future.  And their chanting admonishes me for even considering scolding my kid.  “No, You – Be HERE!” They seem to say.  

And so I take a sip of rum and let it pool over my tongue, the spicy heat warming my mouth as I listen to my child dream crazy dreams.  I don’t tell her that I suspect life as a superstar would be lousy.  I don’t remind her how much she hates eating road food.  I don’t ask who will take care of her donkey, Xote; who will help with lambing, who will sleep with her cat, who will fill her shoes here at home.  Practical aspects are not the point of this conversation.  This is a moment for dreaming.

But I do slip back once more to my own remembrances, watching the sunlight fade across the mountains from Ruth’s porch steps.  She and Sanford would be mostly quiet, perhaps lost in their memories, and my imagination would run wild with my future fantasies, equally unrealistic— the books I would write, the essays I would record, the restaurant I would own, the man I would marry, the kids I’d have, and of course…how the farm would manage to be there through it all.  I didn’t dare utter my dreams out loud.  Shaping those thoughts with tongue and lips would only underscore to my farming neighbors my inability (or perhaps refusal) to grasp reality.

So while they listened to the peepers and remembered their past, I sent my silent wishes out to the spring frogs, hoping my pragmatic heroes wouldn’t hear the calls of my dreams and passions above the din.  

And I wonder now if that’s just the way of things:  we dream forward until we cross a point where we start dreaming backward.  And that thought brings me more solidly into the present. 

My kid is dreaming, and she’s sharing it with me.  I can witness her fantasies and dream forward once more through her imaginings.  And the peepers urge me on.  Listen, listen, listen, she has a dream to tell.  It is for you to enjoy.

And so we do.  We listen to the dream.  We nibble apples and cheese and walnuts, Bob and I grow muzzy and warm from the rum.  We laugh a lot, the dogs take turns sitting on our laps and licking our faces.  And then we go back home.  And I know that next time I hear the peepers, there will be one more vivid memory they’ll conjure up for me to revisit. 

And one week later, as the light turns golden, all three kids burst in the door once more.  They grab the dogs, the snacks, the chairs, and pull me away from my computer.  “We gotta go listen for the peepers!” They order me away from my desk and out on the hike with them. I guess I’m not the only one hooked on making the memories.

This podcast happens with the support of my patrons on Patreon.  And this week I’d like to send a shout out to my patrons Tonja Palmer and Terri Jones.

Thank you, folks!  I couldn’t do it without you!  If you’d like to help support my work, you can do so for as little as $1/month by hopping over to Patreon and looking up Shannon Hayes.