There is a little pond in my backyard. Well, I guess I should say there was a little pond in my back yard. It was one of my favorite places to go. I could relax there, dive into the water and enjoy a fish's life for 30 seconds before I flapped my way up to the surface. I could float around on the surface, pondering life's mysteries under the summer sun. I could splash friends in the summer and snow them with my skates in the winter. I loved that pond.
Then one day it dried up.
Its continuous presence there had been comforting, reassuring. I had never expected it to be gone, this big, parental pond. To me, its disappearance would be as devastating as the sun burning out. It just couldn't happen.
Yet it did.
For a while, I saw its water evaporating, exposing its muddy underbelly. I hadn't thought much of it; these things tend to happen. It should fill up with the next rain, I told myself. I wasn't worried.
It didn't stop, though. Even with the next rain, the pond continued to dry up. The water level became alarmingly low. I was now worried. But I was also busy, too busy to deal with it. I mean, it couldn't really dry up, right?
Wrong.
One day, I came home from school to find it empty. I was shocked. My pond was gone! What am I going to do! No more ice skating in the winter. No more splashing in the summer! It was like my childhood dried up with that pond.
I thought about it constantly. Would it ever come back? Could I ever have fun again? The prospect of living my life without the pond terrified me. It still does.
While I've been writing this, it has been raining. Hard. I can see the once-pond is gaining water. It is now a small puddle, but it has been growing since I've started writing. Every minute, it keeps getting bigger, covering the bear ground that surrounds it. Hopefully it keeps on raining. Hard.