When Kate Went To The Ponds

Everyone has a place that enjoy spending their time in or they have someone that listens to them when they need someone to talk to. When Kate was a child, she often visited the ponds near their house with her brother, Matt. There are several explanations of the ponds throughout the novel, which are connected to the theme of the story. The ponds help Kate decide her job in the future, they are a representation of Kate’s childhood and hometown and they also allowed the relationship between Matt and Kate.
Firstly, the pond had a significant part in Kate’s career. The ponds and Matt were teachers of biology to her. Matt told all about the creatures while Kate sat near the pond. During those times, Kate “came to know the tadpoles of the leopard
They were her favorite places when she was a child. In one of her soliloquies, she said that “there is no image of my childhood that I carry with me more clearly than that” (Lawson, 4). Kate recalled the first time she went to the ponds. “ I was so small he had to carry me on his shoulders-through the woods with their luxuriant growth of poison ivy, along the tracks, past the dusty boxcars lined up to receive their loads of sugar beets, down the steep sandy path to the ponds themselves”(Lawson, 4). From riding on Matt’s shoulders to follow Matt to the ponds, they spent “hundreds of hours” (Lawson, p.5) there. Kate loves the great moments she spent in the ponds. She would always lie down and then Matt would explain everything about nature to Kate. “Her braids bob up and down in the water, making tiny ripples which tremble out across the surface of the pond (Lawson, 5). The ponds are the only good memories Kate has from her childhood because of the many obstacles she had gone through in her
Kate believed that Matt is the most important person in her life. Kate and Matt spent a lot of their time together in the ponds. Matt was the most educated person of the family. Kate considered him a role model and she was proud of him. While Matt and Kate were at the ponds, they sat by the water, where Matt always taught his sister, Kate about the creatures. Kate remembered “a boy of perhaps fifteen or sixteen, fair-haired and lanky; beside him a little girl, fairer still, her hair drawn back in braids, her thin legs burning brown in the sun. They are both lying perfectly still, chins resting on the backs of their hands. He is showing her things” (Lawson, 4-5)”and “all that had been on our minds was this small world lying so still before us” (Lawson, 47). When it was time for family gathering, Kate didn’t want to leave the ponds. “What I remembered was Matt and me, in our usual pose, flat on our bellies beside the pond, our heads hanging out over the water” (Lawson, 197). “Matt and I, side by side, with the sun beating down on our backs. The beetle sauntering along under the water, safe in his tiny submarine. Matt’s amazement and delight” (Lawson, 199). Kate was so amazed when she saw the frogs mating. Matt told Kate that the main goal of all creatures was to reproduce. After Matt’s disturbance, he stopped going to the ponds with Kate. Everything was different and no longer the way Kate liked. When