Tadpoles were a big mystery to me when I was a child. Not that I knew then that what I was so mystified by were tadpoles. They seemed like fish to me. Rather ugly fish but then everything is fascinating as a kid, is it not! There were small ponds around where we lived, with hundreds of tadpoles swimming about in it. The advantage of having parents who encourage interest in nature and adventure is that they don’t complain when you bring in things, living or dead. So I often carried back 5-6 tadpoles in a plastic packet or tin-cups scavenged from the dirtiest of rubbish heaps. Then I would spend hours observing them. But they always disappeared. Sometimes while I was away at school or sometimes at night when I slept. I continued bringing them home in the hope that someday I would solve the mystery. I never did. Not then.
When I grew up and learnt that what I had spent hours admiring and worrying about were actually tadpoles I had laughed. Laughed at the folly that ignorance is. But something is my heart moves every time I think about it. A wrench in the pit of my stomach, a dull pain which comes from reluctant acceptance of the past let go. There was beauty in the tadpole mystery. For had I not spent hours imagining up my own Enid Blyton ‘Mystery of the missing fish’! Oh what growing up changes! And with the retreat of our childhoods what it takes away from us.
What we need is a little romanticism in our lives. Just a little more.