Writing Prompt: It still made him smile.

Didn’t sleep well. Desperately want coffee. The pot is brewing so lets see what comes out in the prompt while we wait. Timers set and off we go.

A little more awake now. I really like how this is shaping up too.

Thursday, January 23^rd: It still made him smile.

It still made him smile.  The silly little frog figurine Dana gave him.  It had a wide and cheese grin on it’s froggy lips, and big bug eyes.  The glass was iridescent and shone in the light.  When he first saw it, he thought the colors improbable.  After all frogs were green or maybe brown, weren’t they? Then Dana made him watch a documentary.  Frogs it seemed came in all sorts of colors, some even more eye catching than his goofy one.

James tried to claim that his frog was goofier than real life frogs and yet another documentary was pulled up.  This one wasn’t solely about frogs but featured a marsh frog from the Danube.  They had laughed as they watched these frogs attempt to catch dragonflies.  They leaped into the air, front webbed limbs spread wide and looking like outstretched hands.  The tongue flew out and even if the frog didn’t catch the dragon fly the hands came in as though attempting to scoop it into their mouths, often even as the frog splashed down into the water.

It was a comical performance and he and Dana cheered when the frog finally managed to catch one of the dragonflies. Looking at his goolie eyed paperweight he couldn’t help but remember and smile.  There was always a flash of pain after the smile, but it was, with time becoming more manageable. 

People liked to say that time heals all wounds, but James found it didn’t, not really.  Time merely created an emotional scab over the would.  A protective covering of distance.  The wound never really healed and a sharp poke to that emotional scab often brought fresh pain.  With time there was distance though.  For a long while he couldn’t look at the frog without feeling that stab shoot straight through the protective layer he was trying to build.  After the funeral, his frog paperweight had been relegated to a drawer in the office.  He couldn’t bring himself to take it from the office, Dana had brought it in and he found it sitting on his desk.  The office was where it lived.  But he couldn’t look at it.

A few months ago he dropped a clip into one of the drawers and when he unearthed it he found the frog again.  It made him smile.  The pain came after but it was, to his relief manageable.  He put the frog back on his desk, returned to it’s natural environment after a long hibernation.

He didn’t know if frogs hibernated and couldn’t bring himself to watch a nature documentary to find out.  That was a step too far right now.  For now, he could smile at the frog and feel the tinge of loss without breaking down completely.  That was enough.

‘Walk before running,’ he thought.  He chuckled to himself and shook his head.  “That sounded almost hopeful,” he mused as he looked away. There were papers waiting for him.  The merger was complex and required a careful management of not only the assets but of the publicity.  They were consolidating different areas which would cause changes.  In the end the changes would be good, but to some people change was always the enemy.