peep

In an exasperated effort to get home after a long day at a new job, with the tines of what promised to be a sparring headache pinching the inside of my eye sockets, I sped up the street. My foot pressed ever so heavily on the gas peal, the early evening radio host blaring through the speakers, and the window just partially down allowing the slightest breeze in to tickle the obstinate tendrils escaping my ponytail.

In a sudden, fleeting moment, the world, the noises, the whir of my car's engine and the jabbering radio all converged to a happenstance moment of unabashed silence. And as the wheels inaudibly carried me around the bend, the melancholy, ever-so-significant chorus of tree frogs erupted in the creeping din of dusk.

Suddenly, I was transported. Back in time, reversed in age, shrunken to the state of mind of a naive, impressionable six year old child at the unsung age of innocence. I was snuggled up in a giant, empty bed, foreign sheets bundled up all around me, the monotonous drone of a box fan in the window just barely audible. And in the unforeseen background, the symphony of peeping tree frogs and chirping crickets on the crescendo of a breeze. I could hear my grandfather's deep snore from down the hall, and the always-wagging tail of the faithful Golden Retriever now lay still in slumber just outside my door.