Summary

A traumatized tweenager finds solace and catharsis in a profane, fictional version of Kermit the Frog, facilitated by the support of her cousins and extended family, during the difficult time of her parents' divorce.

Abstract

The author, a depressed preteen grappling with her mother's departure, discovers an unexpected source of comfort and emotional release through a vulgar parody of Kermit the Frog. This twisted rendition of the beloved Muppet becomes a conduit for expressing the complex and tumultuous feelings associated with her parents' divorce. The unwavering support from her cousins, especially during outings and amidst the harsh Michigan winter, provides a safe haven for her to process her emotions. The author's extended family, notably her Aunt Kay, inadvertently becomes part of this therapeutic process, offering a semblance of normalcy and understanding during a period of significant upheaval. The experience underscores the importance of a supportive family environment and illustrates how humor and imagination can be instrumental in coping with trauma.

Opinions

The author views the profane Kermit impression as cathartic and a crucial outlet for her feelings of sadness and anger during her parents' divorce.
There is an underlying appreciation for the complexity of emotions felt by the author, particularly the paradox of Kermit being both an embodiment of her devastated father and a representation of her own resilience.
The author suggests that Aunt Kay, despite possibly being shocked or amused by the children's behavior, provided a form of silent support by not interfering with the children's coping mechanisms.
The author holds a deep gratitude towards her cousins, Jenny, Kathleen, and Amanda, for their role in helping her navigate her emotional turmoil through laughter and camaraderie.
The extended family is seen as a vital support system, akin to an "invasive species of the Midwest," which influenced the author's decision to have a large family of her own.
The author reflects on the irony that a corrupted version of the wholesome Kermit the Frog character was instrumental in her emotional recovery, emphasizing that the road to healing was not easy.

TRAUMA

Before You Leap

How a Bastardized Muppet Saved My Sanity During My Parents’ Divorce

Like this picture of my friend’s kid, but without the puppeteering talents. (Image: Laura Adams Bowers)

I was a depressed tweenager after losing my mom.

And there weren’t a lot of people who could help me. It was an unassuming, green, felted frog who pulled me out of the swamp.

It wasn’t really Kermit who saved me; it was a depraved version of the beloved little guy. At my cousins’ demand I used to do a Kermit the Frog impression that was as profane as it was cathartic. Jenny and Kathleen were the outlets for all of my “divorce” feelings — blue, green, sad, and bad.

When I dished out Perverted Kermit’s hot takes to my best cousins, I felt less helpless about how Mom had f*cked her boss and left.

My mom wasn’t even the target of Kermit’s ire.

“Kermit, what do you think about how Aunt Kay says that this shopping trip is just a ‘looking’ trip?” Jenny would impishly ask.

“F*ck THAT,” said the frog.

It might’ve seemed easy being green, but it wasn’t. In the arctic air my voice would sound more and more like a hurt thirteen-year-old’s with each passing syllable. After Mom had left on a winter’s day, it wasn’t just that all the leaves were gone and the sky was gray —or that “the stars stood up in the air” as if we all inhabited a poem by Thomas MacDonaugh.

It was the bitter Michigan chill that almost did me in.

As we skated over the ice on Pine Lake, a waterway with a swamp in which even the blue herons could functionally co-parent in the springtime, I was colder than I’d ever been.

The cold stayed with me. It stayed even when the ice thawed in the Detroit suburbs and I entered the second semester of seventh grade. But a sort of adaptive phase was entering my life cycle — a revival, a renewal, a metamorphosis.

I have no idea why it was the meek and mild-mannered Kermit T. Frog who spoke out through my strained throat. Maybe it was my overidentification with my devastated dad, who, like the amphibian I’d loved so much in early childhood, had had an almost comical and bordering-on-unhealthy love for someone harsh, beautiful, and self-absorbed.

Or maybe it was because I liked avocados.

And God only knows what Aunt Kay must have been thinking as she overheard these conversations from the wheel of her Chevy Astro Van and chauffeured us to Elizabeth Green’s Boutique. (Never mind that this messed-up Muppet fanfic was also heard by her younger three children, who couldn’t have been older than nine, seven, and five.)

Whether it was wild offense that caused her to silently shake — or choked-back laughter that made her shoulders round away from us as she drove — I really couldn’t say.

All I knew was that the trappings of late childhood were there on the bench seat — ice skates, parental abandonment, wayward Children’s Television Workshop characters that would make Jim Henson roll over in his grave, and cousins who could make you laugh until you couldn’t breathe.

I like to think that Aunt Kay understood my need for a safe space to be an emotionally regressed and angry little girl, even if nobody in Kay’s immediate family could ever again watch Sesame Street or The Muppet Movie with the same innocence. Anyway, she had a real mom. She couldn’t understand, exactly, but she could sit there with me. And in simply being beside me in the mud, she and my cousins honored those base feelings better than Big Bird ever could.

Out of the dark clusterf*ck came a silver lining.

So who saved me from drowning in that cold lake of sadness after The Divorce, when I was sinking down, down, down through the thermocline? When Jenny and Kathleen were croaking with subversive laughter in the backseat they never imagined they were doing a resuscitation. (And let’s not forget Amanda, my across-the-state cousin who was an unwitting target of some of Kermit’s more colorful prank calls — CPR for the seventh-grader’s soul.)

Jenny, Kathleen, and Amanda — three tweens were the lifeguards “to whom I owe the leaping delight” (frog-legs pun and T.S. Eliot plug intended) for dragging me through the murky, matted weeds and laying me out on shore. And my other cousins, who are all dearer to me than they will ever know — they were the grassy banks’ good Samaritans.

The love I felt from my extended family — the invasive species of the Midwest — is a large part of why I had six kids of my own. And in doing so I hoped to reanimate myself as much as I wanted to breathe life into a new generation.

“But green’s the color of spring,” as the Muppet Show star sang in his seminal song. It may have been corrupted Kermit who saved me, flailing his little arms inanely, diving down into the muckiest muck, and then sitting and sputtering with me in his green deviance. But he sure as hell didn’t act alone.

And no, it wasn’t f*cking easy.

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