By David Anderson, with a splashing puddle full of thanks to Marloes Deeterink.
What is it about puddles and raindrops, blue rubber boots with green frog designs, and yellow rain jackets with hoods not up that beg for a leap-flying, pigtails-scattering, peals-of-laughter-the-air-splitting, water-and-mud-splattering (them and us and the camera lens) kersploosh that is so beautifully, and importantly, a part of childhood?
Ok, but puddles are one thing and the creek that runs through Robbennordbos Forest is quite another, yes?
No.
Well, partly no.
Having been strictly instructed NOT to play in the forest creek, lying prone on the bridge surely could not be frowned upon?
So went the thinking of little Marloes Deeterink as she gazed mesmerized for what seemed hours as the filtered light through the forest trees played upon the surface of the smallish stream below her.
That’s when she saw it.
Quietly, as if even the barest whisper of her ruffled dress might scare the creature lazily sunning itself in the shallows, she rose to a crouch, careful not to allow even her shadow to be cast upon what lurked below.
Without taking her eyes off her prize, she removed one of her galoshes with the pull handle straps.
Gingerly, one boot on, one boot off, as she made her way off the bridge, the boards creaked a bit in protest causing her face to grimace and her fists to clench, her thoughts miffed that her so slight frame and so small stature should illicit such complaint.
She froze.
Not to have worried.
It was still there.
Lowering herself by half-sliding, half-crabbing, down the embankment, all while grasping what brush afforded itself, she was able to find herself at last just above where the creature’s long tail – inches from the embankment on which she was perched – lazily undulated back and forth, back and forth, stirring up just a bit of sediment with each movement.
Lizard-like it lay there, with short limbs protruding at right angles from its slender body, a blunt snout just above the surface, with eyes that seemed to be watching her, alert perhaps to any threat from above.
She need not have worried. The poor thing was nearsighted when peering about above the water and only a fuzzy, blurry image of the child formed before its eyes.
The creature’s nearsightedness would serve her well as with a sudden swoop of her boot with the pull handle straps, she swung down upon the lizard in the water and for her efforts she lifted mud, and pebbles, and a gallon of water at least.
Then she smiled.
As she peered down into the settling murk within her blue rubber boot with the green frog designs, there he was.
Perhaps he was not too happy, but she was.
And best of all she had NOT played in the creek, at least she herself was not in the creek, only her boot.
Which boot contents – mud, and pebbles, and a gallon of water or so, and AND a salamander – she then poured into her other boot, the boot with her foot still in it, then slipped the now empty boot on, and traipsed home, tell-tale puddles of water left behind, water occasionally sloshing over, and a salamander tickling her toes.
Post script:
I wrote this today, my wife having died from cancer 10 months ago this very day, because of someone out there in Internet land by name of Marloes Deeterink who, as it turns out, is Dutch like my wife.
Marloes grew up in Wieringermeer in Kreilaroord, with a backyard of the Robbenoord Forest “waaaay up north in the countryside above Amsterdam.” Marloes now lives in Zaandam.
Marloes allowed me to imagine and recreate the joy of being alive, to reflect on memories that matter, which today – this day of all days – I needed likewise to recall, memories of the joy I had of being married to my dearest treasure on all this earth who prepared me, because of who she was, for the joy yet to be had.
