"We have done but greenly"

Frog and Toad and the Pergola

by Roy, James, Owen, and Felix Smith

Frog and Toad went on a picnic.

They sat on a log by the pond. Toad unpacked the picnic bag. 

There were two peanut-butter sandwiches, four pickles, two apples, and a jar of milk.

Toad sighed.

"What is the matter, Toad?" asked Frog

"These peanut-butter sandwiches are very plain." said Toad.

"They may be plain, but they are very tasty." said Frog.

Toad said, "I do not like to be plain. I would like to be fancy!"

Frog ate a pickle and nodded.

Toad stood up and said, "I would like to be cultured. I will be a European toad. I will build a pergola and will eat fancy food under it. That will make me a fancy toad."

"How do you build a pergola?" asked Frog.

"I will show you!" said Toad.

Frog and Toad walked to Toad's house and Toad pulled out his tools.

Toad gave Frog a saw, a hammer, and a can of nails.

Toad took a screwdriver, a pencil, and some measuring tape. 

Toad held up a post of wood and told Frog to hammer in another piece at the top.

Frog was very clumsy with the hammer, and he missed the nail. 

"Please hurry, Frog! This wood is very heavy!" said Toad.

Frog hammered the wood together. Toad measured another piece of wood and marked where the screw should go.

Toad held the wood in place while Frog screwed the screw in.

"It is not working, Toad. I think a screw cannot go here."

"No, Frog," answered Toad, "You are just screwing it the wrong way. It is righty tighty, not lefty tighty."

Frog and Toad hammered and measured all afternoon. They stood back and looked at their pergola. They were both hungry from all of their work. Toad put his tools away and Frog went inside to find some food.

Frog and Toad ate dinner under their pergola. They ate two peanut-butter sandwiches, four pickles, two apples, and a jar of milk.

"Frog," said Toad. "I do not feel very fancy. I do not feel like a European toad. The pergola did not work. Drat."

Frog ate a pickle and watched the sun setting while he sat under the pergola.

"Toad," he said. "I do not think that a pergola turns you into a different sort of toad. I do not think that is what a pergola is for."

Toad was quiet. He watched the sun set. A single star started to twinkle overhead.

"I think that you are right, Frog. A pergola does not turn you into a different sort of toad. But it is a nice place to eat a peanut-butter sandwich and some pickles and an apple. And it is a very nice place to be the sort of toad that you already are."

And so Frog and Toad sat under the pergola and watched the stars come out.

"And you, my sinews, grow not instant old, But bear me stiffly up"

I am recovering from an injury currently. It is, as far as I can tell, some kind of ankle sprain or strain.

My unofficial goal for 2025 was to run a full marathon, and I had started extending my mileage in earnest a few weeks ago when the weather started to turn.

I do run outside every day in January and February, but it's often too gross to do more than a couple of miles--and there aren't enough daylight hours to put in 5-8 miles a day safely while running in an icy city.

I was eager to get back to the longer distances. Too eager, apparently. I did a couple of 40 mile weeks without ramping up to them, and now I'm on the couch.

I am astounded by how hard it is to be without a daily run. I have no idea how my Dad has survived without it for the past year. 

I am taking stock, as I look out the window with my ankle elevated, of how fragile our seasons of running have been.

I don't think that I owned a single item of athletic clothing in college, but I would often take ambling jogs around my neighborhood (in jeans, apparently) just for the pleasure of running. I eventually did get some shorts and would often run back and forth to school on warm days in graduate school. I played ultimate frisbee from time to time and reveled in my (unearned and surprising to me) ability to keep going when everyone else's legs were shot.

J and I switched from walking to running the triangle of Westside, Buffalo, and Orchard during our first year of marriage, and then made occasional runs through our neighborhood in Greensboro, but never anything more than a mile or two.

We started training to do a 5K together once we'd moved back to New York, but she hurt her hip and we had to scrap the plan--and then she got pregnant.

It was when James was a baby that running became an every day activity for me. I would take him out in a jogging stroller and we'd do a loop through Pittsford along the canal trail and then back through the Pittsford Plaza. We'd say hello to the Scary Horse, then end at the Pittsford Wegman. (He could get a free cookie.)

It was when Owen arrived that running became an institution for J and me together. We bought a double jogger that felt like a huge financial risk in the moment but turned out to be an everyday investment in one of the sweetest seasons of our marriage. We had several different courses but did about 3 miles every day that the weather was warm enough for several years of being young parents. 

We would talk about what we were reading, catch up on each other's days, and revel in the babies' delight in being outdoors and in our neighborhood. We got to know the pets, shops, and people of Irondequoit. We found a source for more free cookies. 

James moved to a scooter and then to a bicycle once Felix came along, and Owen continued to ride in the stroller long past being too heavy for its suspension just for the pleasure of horsing around with Felix as I pushed them up, down, and around the neighborhood. 

J was a confirmed every-day runner by the time we graduated from the stroller, and we'd acquired a treadmill by then so that she could run indoors and through the winter. We both kept up steadily upping our mileage, year after year, and even though we couldn't run together very often we did parallel training so that we could do two half-marathons together.

It was in the final lead-up to the second half that we ran together that she hurt her hip again, and that was the end of another season of our running. She'll occasionally do a few miles around the neighborhood with me, but it never doesn't cost her, and she's come to grips with being an ex-runner by getting her daily movement in on an elliptical. Thus ended another season.

Running, when I look back at it, feels incredibly fragile and beautiful. I'm not sure I ever appreciated, in the moment that I was in, how lucky I was to get to do it or how quickly the season would end. We ran with the double stroller every day, so it just seemed natural that tomorrow would have another double-stroller-run. Until a tomorrow arrived that didn't have one.

Running is a lot like life in that way. 

I think that my ankle will be okay if I take a week or two off. And when I get to step outside in a green, warm neighborhood and make my legs ache and rejoice at the same time, I won't take it for granted.

"A speech of some dozen or sixteen lines which I would set down"

 The Ballard* of Darth Sidious 

by Owen Smith

(to be read in the voice of Emperor Palpatine)

Oh, you may think that I'm nice

But don't judge on what you see

I'll zap myself with lightning 

If you can find a worse Sith than me!

You can keep your sabers red

But blue and green beware!

You may find yourself getting

Quite a scare!

You might be like old Qui-Gon,

To whom Darth Maul I did send!

But chopped in half by Obi-Wan

Is how Maul's life did end!

Now Tyrannus or Dooku,

(Count Dooku, if you will)

Was a real shot to take

But Skywalker did kill.

Old Mace I wasn't sorry

At all to see go,

It sealed my new apprentice

Which to the Jedi is a huge blow!

Over onto Mustafar

My new apprentice I do send.

His name now is Darth Vader,

But what's this? I feel the force bend?

"Prepare my ship!" I tell a clone

Who is already busy.

Taking out order sixty-six

Is no glass of fizzy!

In the next few years there was no rest

In the galaxy anywhere.

The rebel scum stealing our plans

Was no happy affair!

Lord Vader, my apprentice true,

Simply was enraged,

When even when he was on the same ship

As the Death Star plans caged.

He could not recover what was lost,

And when a droid's mission ended,

It spelled "doom" for the Empire

And impossible to mend it!

Red Five (Skywalker) did blow it up,

And Vader shot off course,

With a "Yahoo!" from Solo.

Remore, remorse, remorse!

But we recovered rather quick,

And with Echo Base discovered,

Solo is froze in carbonate

Luke's Dad is not as dead as his Mother!

Forget Tarkin, forget Vader,

To them I'll put the lid!

I'll do as I did to Anakin,

"JUST BRING ME THAT KID!"

Ewoks, a space battle, even some sabers!

I could almost laugh!

"Hey, what are you doing picking me up?"

"IS THAT A REACTOR SHAFT?!?!"

*A ballard is a traditional form of rhyming quatrains probably invented by Robert Doctor Ballard, discoverer of the Titanic

"Bid me run, and I will strive with things impossible"

Me: "I just got back from going up the bay and around the shore of the lake. I run for fifteen miles!"

James: "The secret to enjoying your job is to have a hobby that's even worse." 

"And each particular hair to stand on end"

 J's family calls it "broccoli." 

We just call it "Smith hair." It's the unmistakably slept-on appearance of little boy hair, sticking out at an odd angle and contrasting with the pink, flushed, first-thing-in-the morning expression of a child coming down for breakfast. 

Or, in the case of our boys, coming down for a negotiation. Smoothies, for example, are forbidden on Mondays. They are too time-consuming to make, and this is our busiest school morning of the week.

Fridays, however, can be pancake mornings. Owen loves making pancakes for his brothers. And both of his parents hate cleaning up the kitchen after Owen has made pancakes. Hair askew and full of early morning music, he cracks eggs onto the countertops, spills batter onto the stove, and generally crashes dishes about.

Sunday mornings are granola mornings, and they are also the one morning per week when we might make some attempt at taming the hair that pokes out in all directions. (Also, this is the morning we insist that Felix needs to FINALLY change his clothes, since he's been in them for multiple days in a row.)

But we are inevitably behind and need to be loaded into the van by 8, so the compromise ends up being that they will scarf down some granola in a fresh button-up shirt, but without having made any attempt to smooth out the hair that is pointing in every direction. 

I am not, however, one who can cast stones blamelessly. I too am sometimes in a hurry to get myself fed and out the door, and have seen my several pictures of myself playing a morning concert in black suit and colorful tie, but with half of my hair pointing out at odd angles while the other half remains unruffled. 

"He waxes desperate with imagination"

The boys are cursing each other.

They would tell me that they are sometimes cursing each other, sometimes hexing each other, and sometimes using charms. And sometimes just using normal spells. There's a difference, you know.

We are back into the world of Harry Potter again after a hiatus of over a year, and the whole house rings with cries of "Stupefy!" and "Expelliarmus!" and "Petrificus Totalus!" which they pronounce (variously) as "Petrifitiss Totalus," "Petrissitus Totullis," and "Pecrifictus Totalus!"

(This is what comes of reading the books very quickly and at a young age.)

There are also some other charming pronunciations. Peeves is a Polerantalogist, which I assume means that he studies Polerantology. We quarrel over a Slytherin LEGO character named Blaise Zamboni. 

It's nice that the younger two are into it so deeply now. Previously James was driving the interest for all three, and he apparently re-read the first book so often to the point that he basically had it memorized. (The former Bible quizzer in me sighs at this...) He acquired a board game that was basically Trivial Pursuit on Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and was disappointed when no one would play with him after he trounced us all on the first few playings. 

The younger two appreciated the music from the movies and the idea of Quidditch. (Somewhere on J's Facebook is one of our favorite videos--a 2 year old Felix explaining the rules of Quidditch using Christmas ornaments.)

But now Owen and Felix are both deep into Hogwarts history and lore. I recently played a live film-to-projection concert of the second movie, and they came (dressed in Hogwarts gear) and watched the performance. 

I had hoped, when we started homeschooling, that these boys would grow up with imaginations fired by Fairy Tales, King Arthur, Robin Hood, and the Arabian Nights. They didn't. We allowed a (small) TV into our house, and their imaginations were pretty much entirely formed by Lightning McQueen, Curious George, and the NFL. 

But it's good to see them playing at wizards and, in Owen's words, "finally having a use for all of this Latin we have to do."