Puddles

If it were warmer I’d jump in all the puddles. It’s a day to be a little girl again. But it’s cold and I’m breathing through my mouth because my nose is stuffy and every step my glasses get fogged up, my hot air rises against me. I remember over the summer when it was warm and a storm had come and passed quickly a best friend and I took her babies to the parking lot by her house and jumped in all the puddles we could find. The water was brown and warm and gritty and we jumped and jumped until we were soaked until we soaked each other. We could have jumped all day, we could have jumped the water out of those puddles, but her little boy fell and cut his hand against the gravel and that was a good point to stop. When someone got hurt.
But he’s a champ. He always has been. He bangs his head, trips on stairs, on his own feet. He jumps off the couch just to feel himself flying. So what if he lands, he’ll do it again. His sister wanted so bad to keep going. She begged us back to the puddles. But we took him back to his house, wrapped in his mom’s arms. It’s over Fia, it’s time to go in. The puddles will always be back. And we all have to learn when enough is just enough.

I walk to work every morning. I think best when I’m moving. There was a woman in bright red corduroy and high stilettos. She wasn’t moving well in the rain and the shoes. Me, I hiked my pants into my black rain boots, brought my work shoes in another bag. I looked at her and thought It’s so not worth it, honey

They have just repaved a street. When I step down on to it, the slick of the rain, it looks like I’m walking on black oil or tar. It looks dangerous like I’ll get stuck inside the muck forever, but I keep going and look at my options around the street, the water pooling and moving like a river in the gutter. Its thick band of bubbles my obstacle. And I stop in the middle of the street, take a running leap over the river gutter water and for an instant feel like an antelope, feel like a little girl playing in the rain.