Puddles

No matter how hard Dad tried, they always came back with each rainfall. Dad would pour new gravel on the lane and scrape it, but when the rains came so did the puddles.

The lane dipped about three-quarters of the way down or one quarter on the way up depending on whether you were coming or going. I remember as a small child, my sisters warned me, "Walk around, Pam." Oh, how I wanted to walk through instead splashing my way to the bus.

In the summer, Brenda and I would play in the rain puddles. The poking of the gravel on bare feet was nothing to these little girls who grew up walking on all sorts of terrain. Shoes disappeared once school was out and only returned after the great Darke County Fair. Puddles were made by God for bare feet and two girls on Neff Road.

I don't think there was a time I walked down the lane that I didn't note or look at the place where my beloved puddles often sat waiting for me. No longer did I have the urge to walk on the gravel with bare feet. Yet the puddles did call for the little girl I once was. My sisters and I would look at the gravel that had been tossed aside by cars and tractors landing in the grass (the gravel landed there not the cars and tractors). "Looks like Dad will need to gravel soon," we would often note.

Long after my childhood, Dad tiled the front field. The dip that was in the lane no longer puddled as it had in the past. But in my mind's eye, the old lane traveling up to the big white house or down towards Lavy's will always have the two puddles that called to little feet.

Puddles.