Puddle

 Puddle

Do you ever come across a word that already resides in your mind in one way, but then you see it in a book used in a way you hadn't thought of? In reading A Thousand Feasts by Nigel Slater with my morning tea, I keep coming across the word "puddle". 

Now for me when I hear the word "puddle" I picture a child with red rubber boots on stomping through water on a rainy day. It is such a pure picture of delight and laughter that I have never thought of it any other way. Now Nigel Slater comes along and he is writing about food with puddles of gravy or a gorgeous red sauce sitting on the plate just waiting to be soaked up by a piece of bread or savored with a pudding or ice cream. It shakes up my thinking on a "puddle". I want to delight in that gorgeous puddle on my plate like a child stomping through it in my red boots. Yesterday was Thanksgiving, there actually was a puddle on my plate of turkey gravy, but no picture of that puddle. It was gleefully devoured.

Then I begin wondering about words that create images in my mind and shake up my thinking. This book with his gorgeous, descriptive words does just that. Here is one line, "To smell steaming rice in the early morning is as comforting as being a baby swaddled in a cashmere shawl". Isn't that imagery amazing? Don't you just want to be "swaddled in a cashmere shawl"? Do we pay that much attention to a particle of food placed in front of us?

The closest I could get to a puddle in my own backyard is sitting in the birdbath. I imagine the birds think of it as their own personal puddle, a place to stomp their feet and splash about while washing their food or their feathers.

We must have rain to make a puddle. With bad times we can make something beautiful. There is a quote that says, "Into every life a little rain must fall".  So let the rains come and in the morning after the rain has passed, the sun will shine and we can dance in the puddles.
 

Find your own personal puddle today and dance.

Sending love,

Marilyn