The Golden Frog Hotel

Beside me in the passenger’s seat, Dad’s eyes are closed. If he is not already asleep, he is close to it. He is in his eighties now, and this is where I usually find him, in a sort of dreamy, half-awake state. 

“Are you alright, Dad,” I ask again. He sighs, gives me a small smile and a nod. 

“Fine, just fine,” he says. This is the answer he always gives, an answer he doesn’t have to dig too deeply to find.

It is a Saturday morning, and we are leaving Panama City, driving into the mountains, to a small market village called El Valle de Antón. Decades ago, as a child, I travelled this road in the back of my parents’ Land Rover. Now in a strange reversal of roles, I am the driver, and Dad is my passenger; his wheelchair is folded down into a slim package in the hatch of the rental car. We are now a family of two.

On the flight from Miami, I watched him closely, worrying that the trip had been a mistake. What if he became ill? What if he had a stroke? But Mom is no longer around to fuss, and the doctors had actually approved the trip.

“It will be a lot of work for you,” a caregiver from the home had warned me.

Dad’s memory has been draining from him like life blood. His story-telling and quick wit are mostly gone, leaving him as colorless as the walls of his rest home, grey as the porridges and fruit purées they deliver to him on plastic trays. 

Part of me has imagined that the tropical air of Panama would transform him, turn him back into his younger self. He was once the head researcher at the center for rain forest biology, the man who could imitate jungle bird calls and who carried insect collecting jars and plant samples in his pockets.

But on this trip, the hot and humid air leaves him limp and wilted, and his breathing becomes labored. Yesterday I tried to take him out for a walk in Panama City, but the sidewalks were crowded with pedestrians and too narrow for the wheelchair. More than once, the wheels caught in the cracked pavement, and Dad had to grasp the arm rests to keep from pitching forward. When we returned to the air conditioning of the hotel room, he was exhausted and collapsed into bed.

We share a hotel room. He has the bed, and I sleep lightly on a rollaway cot under the window. Dad wakes often in the night, confused, and if he tries to rise, I jump to my feet to grab his arm and help him into the bathroom or lead him back to his bed. Nothing would be worse than a fall.

Early this morning, when I had given up on sleep, I decided to load him into the car and take him on this trip to El Valle, hoping the cool mountain air would be less oppressive.

Now in the car, he is staring out the window, and I press the lever to lower the glass, allowing the smells of the city to enter the car. Olfactory sensation, I once read, carries the deepest memories, and the smell of Panama City is distinctive, a heady mixture of diesel fuel, roasted meat from the street vendors, and overripe fruit.

I check the route on my phone. I have abandoned my own memory to navigate and rely instead on the GPS app. Roads have changed, buildings have been erected, and nothing looks familiar. I wonder how it all seems to Dad. 

As we drive, I feel compelled to fill the silence, and I talk continuously, keeping my voice cheery. If our roles are reversed, then I will provide the stories, perhaps remind Dad of who he used to be.

“Do you remember we would drive up to El Valle on Sundays with Mom to go to the market?” I say. “I used to like it so much because it meant not having to go to church.”

Dad grunts which I take as agreement.

“Mom would want to buy oranges,” I continue, “and she would get the 15 kilo bags because she said they were such a good deal.”

Dad is looking out at the electrical lines that run along the highway.

“I remember Mom would juice the first few dozens for breakfast, but then we would get so sick of them. What was left of the fruit would go soft and start to mold, so Mom would pitch it into the jungle for the birds and the agoutis to eat.”

I recall Mom’s final days. Dad and I had been walking from the hospice center when he leaned down to pick something up from the lawn. It was the molted exoskeleton of a cicada. Always the naturalist, he examined it, and then held it out for me to see. “When we die,” he said, “it’s like this. We leave behind an old brown husk and go on to become something better and brighter.”

We turn off the coastal highway and onto the road that leads up into the mountains. The paving is rough, and the small rental car bumps and jerks. 

Suddenly as we near the village, Dad perks up and begins gesturing, waving with his hand. 

“There,” he says, “Go there”

I turn the car to the right, down a dirt road, dodging potholes and puddles, and soon we pull into the gravel parking area of a small hotel. The name written above the front door has changed, but still I recognize it and the veranda restaurant out front.

“We used to come here with your mother,” Dad says. 

When I was a child, Mom would ask to stop at this hotel restaurant before we got onto the road back to Panama City. We would take a table out front and order a drink. In truth, it was just an excuse to justify the use of the hotel’s toilets which, unlike many public bathrooms in Panama, were clean and kept in good repair. 

The main feature of the place, though, was a small gazebo in the courtyard which contained a lush miniature jungle, cooled by a tiny waterfall fountain. Inside were poison arrow frogs, brilliant creatures, the bright gold color of ripe mango. 

“This is the place with the golden frogs,” I say now to Dad as the memory comes back to me.

There are only three other cars in the parking lot, and immediately I see a problem. There is no way I can maneuver the wheelchair through the gravel or up the wooden stairs to the veranda, but Dad has already opened his door, and is anxious to step out. 

“Wait, stop,” I say and rush to the other side of the car to grab his arm and help him stand. It is raining, but he is eager to move forward, and we take one step at a time, Dad leaning on me, leaning on the wooden railing. Once we reach the veranda, I get him to the nearest table and he flops onto one of the wicker chairs. I imagine the walk and the climb up the stairs have wiped him out, but he is alert and looking around.

When the waitress comes, I prepare to ask for the limonada Mom always ordered. It was made with Panamanian lemons, a concoction so delightfully tart it would make our eyes water, but Dad surprises me by speaking up first and ordering “Cerveza Panamá.”

The golden frogs...when I first saw them, I must have been a small child, because Dad had to hold me up to look into the gazebo. He helped me locate six of them, hiding under leaves, clinging to the rocks by the fountain, crawling on the walls of the structure. Dad said that the indigenous people believed that when the frogs died, they turned into actual nuggets of gold. 

Now as we wait for our beers, I say, “Look,” and I point to the small gazebo in the distance.

 “Do you think the frogs are still there?” 

He shakes his head, but I walk over anyway to take a look, hoping he is wrong. 

Even when I was a child, he had told me that the little frogs were endangered, a term I remembered because the alarming word ‘danger’ was embedded within. Inside the gazebo now, there is only emptiness--grey cement with a few gum wrappers and cigarette butts.

“Ibañez,” he says, enigmatically, when I return to the table. ”The fungus.”

The waitress places our drinks in front of us. Dad ignores the glass, reaches for the bottle and begins to drink directly from it, looking bold and rakish, like his younger self.

“Who is Ibañez?” I encourage. “Was he a colleague?”

Then it happens, maybe it is the taste of the beer, but the light comes on in his eyes. He sets the bottle down, and he begins to talk.

“You know,” he says, beginning this story the way he begins all stories, “A fungus began killing them off in the wild, all of the golden frogs, but Ibañez managed to collect enough to set up a colony. It’s a sort of Noah’s Ark of them kept at the Smithsonian Institute. They’re being kept alive there, kept from going extinct.”

We finish the beer and pay the tab. I walk Dad over to use the bathroom, and then help him down the stairs and back to the car. Within moments of settling in the passenger’s seat, he is asleep, so I start the car and begin the drive back to Panama City.

Dad smells of his sweat. As a child, I thought the term ‘extinct’ had something to do with the word ‘stink.’ I know I should help Dad to shower tonight, but will wait until the smell is absolutely unbearable. It doesn’t seem to bother him.. 

If Dad is asleep, he will not notice that I am weeping. It is the beer, I think, or maybe last night’s lack of sleep, but I know it is the empty gazebo. The frogs are gone, being kept alive in an institution. But Dad is still here, and I will take what I can get, holding onto him in whatever form he takes. One day he may leave behind an empty brown husk; for now I will cherish him like gold.