I’m at the theater with some friends, a matinee. The show hasn’t started yet and we are remarking on how lovely the weather has been. I tell them that I was looking that morning where we walk our dog, at a piece of broken concrete on a slight rise because at that exact spot when it rains, a heart-shaped puddle develops. It has to rain more at one time than it has so far this fall but then, it is reliable. If it stops raining the sunshine reflects the trees around the small puddle. If it stops raining for longer, the puddle disappears.
I call this place the heart-shaped pond and on every rain-free day, including that day, I look at it and greet it. I say: “Hello future home of the heart shaped pond.”
I look at my friends, one of whom is a writer, like me, and the other an art-lover and see that they are looking at me with: a) a little boredom; and b) I’m going to say mild curiosity, idle wonder. Not the ‘is she losing it?’ sort of wonder that we all fear, more like the old, ‘how drunk was she?’ kind we sometimes encountered in our youth. But this is a Sunday matinee and we’re all old women, so realistically its closer to a).
Still, thinking about the heart-shaped pond fills me with joy. I can’t wait for the rains to start so that I can see it again. Maybe it was their lack of interest or just my poor sense of audience, wouldn’t be the first time, but I think I should be very careful who I share this information with. Since you are a complete stranger to me and we know virtually nothing about each other, you seem like a good choice.
It’s not a heartbreakingly interesting story, but it is almost a story, isn’t it? Or someday it might be. A heart shaped pond that only comes to visit when it rains and vanishes into the glaring light of the first dry day.