There Goes My Beans Again by Online Frog

FROG AND TOAD ARE FRIENDS (1970)

"What you see
Is the clear warm lite of April.
And it means
That we tin begin
A whole new year together
…
Nosotros will skip through the meadows
And run through the woods
And swim in the river.
In the evenings we volition sit
Right here on this forepart porch
And count the stars."

Who exercise you lot think gave united states this lush image of dearest expressed and explored in nature? Love as an invitation, to participate equally and joyfully in the physical pleasures of life; running, pond, sitting. Pleasures multiplied and amplified by experiencing information technology with your love, the one you live through a year with. If I didn't know amend, I'd wonder if it was a poem by James Schuyler ("Can I tempt yous to a pond walk?"). If it took identify on Burn Island I might remember it was Frank O'Hara, merely it's also obviously not that i, she who claimed, "I can't fifty-fifty relish a blade of grass unless I know there's a subway handy."

This is from "Spring," the showtime story almost Frog and Toad, the most famous gay couple in children's literature. In this piece I want to convince you, equally I want to be convinced, that in these iv books Arnold Lobel longed for, and then found, the dearest he created for his amphibian doppelganger.

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This all might seem also not bad to you, besides obvious. After all, of course I desire to believe that Frog and Toad are gay. I'm a gay man and a at present-erstwhile children's librarian (with a few cardigans liberated from my stylish ex-boyfriend'southward closet). I've besides started a career writing children'southward books, and find them a devilishly tricky but sublime art class. It'southward not implausible to think that I would reach to see my identity reflected in this earth that is besides my vocation.

Just stay with us for awhile. Frog and Toad are Friends came out in 1970. In 1974, Arnold Lobel came out as gay to his family. By 1979 he had met Howard Weiner, v'4" to Arnold's half-dozen foot something (await at how tall Frog is side by side to his Toad, your heart will intermission if you lot think well-nigh it likewise much). Arnold created these characters. How did they create him, in their turn?

FROG AND TOAD TOGETHER (1972)

Howard Weiner is still viii years away. The Frog and Toad room in Howard's Finish, the Provincetown bed and breakfast Howard would subsequently own, is at least 26 years away. Since Frog and Toad Together is very concerned with domesticity (tending to a garden, blistering, keeping one'due south life in some kind of club), let me tell you near this room.

Information technology is tucked under the roof. The ceiling slants over the bed, the kind of bed y'all'd find in a film book. Where mothers put ill children to bed with common cold compresses and bulb thermometers.

Next to the bed is a low wooden bookshelf. It's lined with Mouse Soup, Frog and Toad All Year, a story I didn't know about an elephant. At that place are editions in Hebrew and German. Most of them are signed. I recommend sitting on the floor to read them; but then, a lot of my task is sitting on a floor reading children'south books, so you might choose the armchair next to the window.

There's a blimp Frog sitting next to a stuffed Toad on the bookshelf, their shoulders touching. The two of them are likewise framed on the wall next to the hobbit-like closet, and another framed print hangs betwixt the windows. The curtains are ruffled, and the bedspread is patterned with seashells.

You wouldn't look it to be hither. Or, at to the lowest degree, I didn't. I booked a room in a Provincetown B&B, the nigh affordable one I could observe but more than I wanted to spend, later my Deport Week plans cruel through. (For the uninitiated: Provincetown is a town at the tip of Cape Cod with a storied LGBT history and present. Behave Week is a social gathering for gentleman homosexuals of the burly and hirsute variety, equally well every bit those who savor their company). I showed up dragging my suitcase behind me and Yi Zhao-Weiner, the proprietor, led me up to the room. When I saw the framed print I gasped gleefully. When I realized the total extent of the decorations I gasped once again, probably theatrically simply I couldn't help myself (I am gay). When Yi told me that this was the Frog and Toad room because Howard, his recently passed partner, had been in a relationship with Arnold Lobel, the part of my brain that processes surprise and joy overloaded and so shut downwardly.

I don't believe in such an orderly universe that some Deity decided that my previously-reserved house would be unavailable, forcing me into this room at the nexus of everything that matters to me (gay history, children's literature, and the men who, like me, live in those overlaps). Just I knew I had to practice something more with this happy happenstance. I spent the next year thinking virtually that sleeping accommodation, Arnold Lobel, and his relationship with Howard. I concluded, after doing zero fact-checking and less inquiry, that Arnold came out, met Howard, the two of them had a long and happy about-marriage, and he wrote these books specifically well-nigh his lover.

The side by side twelvemonth I booked the room again, and interviewed Yi. I establish that of course the story wasn't that straightforward or obvious. Arnold came out as gay only after the starting time two books in the serial came out. He met Howard subsequently most, if not all, of the Frog and Toad books were published.

Merely Frog and Toad Together, from 1972, is so easy to interpolate equally gay. Accept the story "Dragons and Giants." Here'due south how information technology ends:

" 'Frog, I am glad to have a brave friend like you,' said Toad. He jumped into the bed and pulled the covers over his head.

'And I am happy to know a brave person similar yous, Toad,' said Frog. He jumped into the closet and shut the door.

Toad stayed in the bed, and Frog stayed in the closet. They stayed there for a long time, just feeling very brave together."

I don't demand to explicate this to y'all, do I? Bravery and the cupboard and a bed, existence together and yet apart, considering of and despite fear.

And then yous accept "The Dream," the final story in this volume. Toad, e'er broken-hearted, dreams that he is on a stage, performing all kinds of theatrical delights. The theater is empty except for Frog, who applauds his friend while getting smaller and smaller until he disappears. Toad wakes up in a panic, but "Frog was continuing near Toad'due south bed… 'Frog, is that really you?' said Toad. 'Of form it is me,' said Frog…. Toad looked at the sunshine through the window. 'Frog,' he said, 'I am then glad that yous came over.' 'I always do,' said Frog.

Arnold hadn't moved out of his family abode in 1972. Just he would, 1 day, be in a relationship with a much shorter man, an anxious boy who was never quite sure what he should practise, or if he was loved. They would live together until the last days of Arnold's life, while he was dying of AIDS-related complications and Howard was nursing him. It was the '80s by then, and that's what happened.

FROG AND TOAD ALL Year (1976)

This i came out in 1976, two years subsequently Arnold came out as gay. It's also the only one dedicated to a human: James Marshall, another famous children's book author/illustrator, also a gay man, who died in 1992, also from complications relating to AIDS (described as a "wicked angel," by their sister and contemporary Maurice Sendak). There'due south a affiche, a framed Marshall cartoon, on the meridian floor adjacent to the bathroom, simply Yi hadn't known who he was until I brought it upwards. I imagine that Arnold and James were friends, or lovers, or peradventure sometimes enemies (perhaps all of the above; I saw a lot of friends, lovers, and enemies during Bear Calendar week, and assume that gay life in New York City in the '70s had no shortage of what we now telephone call "drama").

Gay children's literature, and gay authors, have changed a lot since 1976. For the better, of grade. We've got books that are forthright in their queerness, like "The Sissy Duckling" and "Worm Loves Worm" and "In Our Mothers' House." Some with the queerness backgrounded, another powerful message ("The Popularity Papers," "A Crow of His Own"). And while many LGBTQ authors aren't out in their public personas, for whatsoever reason, in that location are now many author bios saying "He lives with his husband in" or acknowledgments with "And thanks to my partner for". My ain debut picture show book, "A Storytelling of Ravens," refers to the author as a confirmed bachelor, an quondam-fashioned term for a gay human, as I was/am uncoupled and relish dated euphemisms.

This is better than subtext and queer coding and reading between the lines. It is better for children to have confident, public queer role models, both in and out of literature, instead of realizing twenty years later that they were deeply and subconsciously impacted by something that resonated with an as-notwithstanding-unarticulated sense of self.

And yet.

I like "Tango Makes Three," merely it doesn't make my heart burst the way the story "Down The Colina" does. Toad doesn't want to go sledding, but Frog bundles him up warmly and frog-marches him (lamentable) to the sled. Toad is afraid of sledding, of course. "Do not exist afraid," said Frog. "I volition exist with you on the sled." But Frog falls off without Toad noticing, and as the sled careens down the hill Toad exclaims "I could non steer the sled without you, Frog…Yous are correct. Wintertime is fun!" Simply after a crow spills the beans, Toad "saw that Frog was not in that location. 'I AM ALL Lonely!'" screamed Toad, histrionic. I'm often single; I know that feeling.

So at that place's Christmas Eve. I never stopped to wonder about Frog's or Toad's families before this one. They're adult-ish, and in that location are other animals around that they run across to be friendly plenty with. But neither of them has siblings, or parents, or extended kin networks. Not even on Christmas Eve, when Frog is tardily arriving to Toad's business firm. Toad panics, of form, imagining that he is lost, or under attack (as I oft worry about my friends). "My friend and I will never have another Christmas together!" He gathers supplies to save his friend from harm, similar "a lantern in the attic. 'Frog will see this light. I will show him the mode out of the woods.'" Only of grade Frog was fine, just running on queer time, and together, alone, they spent "a merry Christmas Eve." Not with a family that some people might recognize, simply with their chosen family, that phrase deeply familiar to generations of us.

I love subtext, marginalia, palimpsests. While I don't want queerness to always be relegated to the shadows, overhead lighting doesn't practise anyone any favors, either.

DAYS WITH FROG AND TOAD (1979).

Arnold wrote "Days With Frog And Toad," the last book in the series, in 1979. He had told his family he was gay five years earlier. He might accept known Howard by this bespeak; there's a re-create of it at Howard's Terminate signed, "With my deepest everything" dated September 1979. This inscription doesn't accept Howard's name in it, but I hope it was written to him.

Yi, Howard'south partner, told me that Howard was a very broken-hearted sort, "very Toad-like." Ever rushing over to the neighbors in a panic, never sure what to practice. He and Yi met online, and when they had an opportunity to meet in person for the start time, in California, Howard's neighbors had to convince him to accept another take chances on love.

In our interview, Yi broke my center by commenting, "Towards the end of Howard's life, he told me 'I don't think Arnold and I were really in love.' "

This passage is from "Lone," the last story in the concluding book:

"Toad went to Frog's house. He found a annotation on the door. The note said, 'Love Toad, I am not at home. I went out. I want to be alone.' 'Solitary?' said Toad. 'Frog has me for a friend. Why does he want to exist alone?'"

"I thought there was love," Howard had said. "I thought he loved me, but probably he just wanted me as a kept boy.  Peradventure it wasn't real love."

"Alone," again. "If Frog wants to be alone," said the turtle, "why don't you leave him alone?" "Possibly you lot are right," said Toad. "Perhaps Frog does not want to see me. Maybe he does not want to be my friend anymore."

"More similar a boyfriend for convenience, perhaps, a footling flake."

"Frog!" cried Toad. "I am sorry for all the dumb things I do. I am sad for all the giddy things I say. Delight be my friend over again!"

"Why did he decorate the room with all that Frog and Toad memorabilia?" I asked.

"Every bit a memorial," Yi said.

"But Toad," said Frog. "I am happy. I am very happy. This morning time when I woke up I felt practiced because the sun was shining. I felt good because I was a frog. And I felt practiced because I have yous for a friend. I wanted to be lonely. I wanted to recollect about how fine everything is."

Arnold closed the door on Frog and Toad with this: "They were two close friends sitting lone together." That tension is as perfect a portrait of queer longing as any I've read.

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I know a decent number of LGBT people writing books for young children, though fewer of that number are gay men who are devoted to picture books (and vanishingly few are also transgender like myself, but that might be a different essay). Deport Week in Provincetown could easily feel similar a holiday from the writerly role of my identity, a time for not-particularly-family-friendly recreation. Simply the Frog and Toad room at Howard'due south End keeps me anchored to all parts of myself. Possibly considering the best fine art merely comes from a fully-realized cocky. Or peradventure the universe is winking at me, saying girl, don't forget who you came from.

I have to admit, I liked the idea of this essay better when I thought Arnold just wrote down the realities of his life with Howard. "TOAD WAS BASED ON HIS Beau," I told people histrionically, before I bothered to spend 2 minutes on Wikipedia. It's no surprise, though, that the real story behind the story would exist more complicated than that. But this deep and abiding honey between two "friends," one short, one tall, one perpetually uncertain, one steadfast, uncannily echoes the relationship he would proceed to have with Howard.

Which leaves me wondering, what unconscious desires do we put into our art, and how do they manifest in our life? Tin I write myself a boyfriend? Or is it the reply to a deeper question, about the ways that our longings come out of u.s.a. before we're ready to know them, and nosotros can only recognize them after they've been exorcised? Whatever the truth is, Frog and Toad volition forever be my standard for every kind of love.

---

Kyle Lukoff is the author of A Storytelling of Ravens, Explosion at the Poem Factory, the Max serial, and the Stonewall Volume Honour winning moving picture book When Aidan Became a Brother. A big give thanks you to Kyle for assuasive me to postal service his slice here. You lot can learn more almost Kyle at www.kylelukoff.com.

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