I was washing dishes one day in May 2020 when my youngest, 11-year-old Nathan, came running into the house.
“Mom, you won’t believe what I found in the mud puddle. Come see!”
We were two months into pandemic lockdown by that point, and remote learning hadn’t been holding Nathan’s interest. I was glad to hear him excited about something.
I dried my hands and followed Nathan out to a large puddle in our driveway. “They’re tadpoles!” he said. “Dad said a frog must have laid her eggs in there.”
I bent down for a closer look. There were hundreds of tadpoles swimming around.
“Aren’t they cool?” he said.
The next few days, Nathan kept his eye on the tadpoles. One afternoon, he asked if
