I don’t remember if I’ve written much about my childhood friend Alex in these pages, but he was my best friend in nursery school and kindergarten, and despite being in my life for such a short time, he has retained something like heroic status in my memory, maybe because he was one of the few people to see me and accept me at that vulnerable time in my life. At some point during those same years, my family went on a camping trip by a lake and I found a salamander by the water: a plain, greenish-black creature who climbed across my child-sized hand and immediately felt like a friend. And, over time, Alex and the salamander have started to merge in my mind – not because they looked alike, but because they both symbolized friendship in its most magical form, able to treat me with kindness, and willing to spend time with me even when there was nothing to say.
I don’t remember for sure if there was just one salamander, or of I’ve merged a couple of different memories into one, but I remember seeing the salamander and thinking that he was just like me: vulnerable, curious, and alone. I also remember thinking that his feet were soft, and that he reminded me of the frogs I’d met on another camping trip, when my brother and I sat next to a pond in the rain, counting tadpoles in the water.
When I looked up salamanders online, I found out that salamanders are amphibians, like frogs rather than lizards, and that they thrive in moist environments and hide in shadows, which is why they’ve come to represent the hidden aspects of ourselves in psychology and mythology. Most meaningful to me, salamanders are supposed to represent healing, because they can regenerate lost limbs, as well as other damaged parts of their bodies, like the heart or even part of the spinal cord, without scarring. Not only can salamanders regenerate lost limbs, they often intentionally drop their tails in order to get away from a predator, which is a skill that would have served me well when I was growing up in my father’s house.
I like the symbolism of the salamander regenerating limbs because even though I’m not an especially adaptable person, I have been able to regrow parts of myself that I thought I’d lost along the way. It has been a painful process, kind of like the bone-regrowing potion in the Harry Potter books, but it feels magical nonetheless. I don’t remember Alex losing an arm or leg in nursery school, or regenerating it a few weeks later, but in my imagination that was something he could have done, because he seemed only half human to me, with magical powers of his own, like the ability to draw pictures of the images I saw in my head and make them real.
There is a lot of diversity among salamanders, in color and size and shape and limbs, but the more brightly colored they are, the more likely they are to be poisonous, unlike my drab-colored, benign little friend. There are about 760 living species of salamander found in north America alone, but I couldn’t find a picture of my salamander, so maybe he was feeling shy on picture day.
Interestingly, there’s a whole mythology around salamanders being created by fire, or impervious to fire, because they tended to live in hollowed out logs, and when those logs were set on fire, the salamanders would run out, in order to survive. But, even if they can’t withstand fire, or create it, it probably helped their survival to have these myths swirling around them, scaring people away, or inspiring their awe and support.
Along with a reputation for healing, and surviving fiery logs, salamanders are also seen as symbols of transformation. While they can regenerate lost body parts throughout their lives, they also go through a one-time transformation, like a caterpillar who becomes a butterfly, as part of their growth cycle. But in my mind, both Alex and Alexander the salamander have remained unchanged over time, and have offered me a tremendous amount of comfort as I have grown and changed into new versions of myself that neither of them would recognize, though they might recognize something familiar around the eyes.
If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.
Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?
rachelmankowitz 