Behind the Puddle

There are moments in life that announce themselves as turning points.

A graduation.

A wedding.

The birth of a child.

The loss of someone we love.

And then there are the quieter moments, the ones that don’t feel significant while they’re happening. A decision to buy a few patio pavers. A bird feeder. A comfortable chair. The simple hope of spending a little more time outside.

Looking back, I realize I wasn’t just building a patio.

I was building a place where I would slowly meet myself again.

When we began planning our backyard patio, my reasons were practical. Living with chronic pain means that many of the things I once took for granted now require planning. Walking through the yard wasn’t always easy. Sitting outside for long periods wasn’t comfortable. I simply wanted a place where I could be outdoors without my body constantly reminding me of its limitations.

I thought we were building accessibility.

I had no idea we were building possibility.

The patio was finished, the chairs found their places, and almost without intention I began spending my mornings outside. Then my afternoons. Then many evenings. It wasn’t because something extraordinary was happening.

It was because I finally had a place to stay long enough to notice.

At first, I watched like many of us do.

I wanted to know the names of everything.

What kind of bird is that?

What species of turtle?

Why are the geese doing that?

I wanted facts.

Answers.

Certainty.

There is nothing wrong with curiosity, but over time something unexpected happened.

The questions changed.

Instead of asking, “What is this?” I began asking, “What is this moment showing me?”

That one small shift changed everything.

The puddle behind our home isn’t remarkable by most standards. It isn’t a famous lake or a wildlife refuge. It is simply a small body of water in a neighborhood in Iowa.

Yet it became one of the greatest teachers I have ever known.

The geese raised their families.

The mallards grew from tiny yellow ducklings into confident young birds.

A turtle we affectionately named Shelly appeared just often enough to remind us that not every neighbor wants to be known.

A beaver quietly swam by on his own schedule.

The sparrows argued over the feeders.

The rabbits found treasures where I only saw dirt.

And then there were the herons.

Stella and Stanley.

Majestic when they stood quietly at the water’s edge.

Awkward when they slipped climbing the muddy bank.

Playful as they chased one another through the trees.

Watching them taught me something I didn’t expect.

Even the creatures we admire most have ungraceful moments.

Maybe we all do.

As the stories accumulated, I never sat down with the intention of writing a book.

I simply wrote because I didn’t want to forget.

One ordinary moment after another.

One observation.

One photograph.

One lesson.

Eventually those moments became what many of you now know as Behind the Puddle.

What surprises me most is that I didn’t create the project.

The project created me.

Somewhere along the way, my life began to change in ways I couldn’t see while they were happening.

I became more patient.

I became more comfortable not knowing every answer.

I stopped feeling that every observation needed to become information before it had value.

I discovered that sometimes simply witnessing something is enough.

I also noticed that my work beyond the patio was changing.

For years, I have been involved in end-of-life education, advance care planning, grief conversations, and legacy work. I assumed those parts of my life were separate from sitting outside watching birds.

They weren’t.

The puddle quietly reshaped the way I approach people.

I became less interested in documents and more interested in the person sitting in front of me.

Less interested in perfect answers and more interested in meaningful questions.

Less interested in teaching and more interested in listening.

The puddle didn’t take me away from my life’s work.

It deepened it.

Perhaps the greatest surprise wasn’t what changed in me.

It was what changed around me.

My husband Brian began sitting outside with me.

Our granddaughters started noticing visitors before I did.

Neighbors stopped to ask if Stella had been around.

People I had never met began sharing stories of the birds outside their own windows.

Some told me they had started putting out feeders.

Others said they had simply begun looking up.

I realized Behind the Puddle was never really about my puddle.

It had become permission for other people to discover their own.

Recently, Brian looked at me after taking a photograph and said something that stopped me in my tracks.

“I have a completely different wife since you started the Puddle Stories.”

At first, I laughed.

Then I thought about it.

He wasn’t talking about the stories.

He wasn’t talking about the patio.

He was talking about me.

The woman he has known through decades of life together.

Through joy.

Through trauma.

Through raising children.

Through chronic pain.

Through ordinary Tuesdays.

Somehow, this quiet little place behind our house had given something back that neither of us knew had been missing.

Not because my life became easier.

It didn’t.

The challenges are still here.

The medical appointments still happen.

Pain is still part of my daily life.

Family concerns haven’t disappeared.

Grief still visits.

What changed wasn’t my circumstances.

What changed was that they stopped being the only story.

That may be the greatest gift the puddle has given me.

People often ask what Behind the Puddle is about.

Birds?

Nature?

Photography?

Writing?

If you’ve been reading for a while, you already know the answer.

Those things are simply the setting.

The real story has always been about paying attention.

Because when we begin paying attention, something remarkable happens.

We notice beauty that was always there.

We notice kindness.

We notice grief.

We notice resilience.

We notice one another.

We notice ourselves.

If there is one thing I hope these stories leave behind, it isn’t that someone falls in love with geese or herons or turtles.

It is that they find their own puddle.

Maybe yours isn’t a backyard at all.

Maybe it’s a front porch.

A park bench.

A walking trail.

A favorite chair beside a window.

A community garden.

A balcony.

A quiet corner where the world slows down just enough for you to notice it again.

The place itself isn’t what matters.

Showing up does.

Day after day.

Long enough for ordinary moments to become extraordinary.

Long enough to realize that life isn’t only happening around you.

It is gently, patiently, changing you too.

And for that, I will always be grateful for one little patio, one ordinary puddle, and all the unexpected gifts they have given to everyone who has chosen to spend a little time Behind the Puddle.