Lily's Pond

Every couple of months, Lily got to spend the weekend at her grandma's house. It was her favorite place to be, and she always looked forward to her next visit. The refrigerator and pantry were full of snacks, and there were lots of toys, games, and movies for her to enjoy. It was a cottage on the countryside with a lot of open space to run around. A few of the trees were easy to climb, and a swing hung from a large tree at the edge of the woods.

When Lily played outside, she usually stayed in the yard, but there was one place behind some trees that she always made sure to check out during her visits. It was a small pond that appeared to be perfectly round. This pond had always been special to Lily because it inspired her name.

When Lily's grandma first moved into the cottage, there was nothing in the pond aside from water. Lily's mother thought it was cute at first, but after a while she started to remark about how simple and boring it was. Grandma decided to do something about it, and the next time Lily's mother visited, she was pleasantly surprised to see a few lily pads in the pond. She still thought the pond was too simple, but Grandma told her to be patient, and over time, more lily pads grew, and a few sprouted blossoms. When Lily's mother got pregnant, she paid a visit to the pond and saw a white lily blossom that had reached an impressive size. She never imagined something so beautiful would have come out of such a simple little pond, but she looked forward to telling her future child about it. She also realized that she loved the name Lily for a girl.

Lily was just a toddler the first time her mother told her the story about her name. Visiting the pond became routine whenever they went to see grandma. Part of the excitement was observing how much the lilies had grown, and when Lily was three, something even more exciting happened. A mother frog laid eggs in the pond, and soon it was full of tadpoles. Lily loved to watch the tadpoles, and she sometimes tried to catch them. They would swim away from her hands too quickly, though, and her mother said they needed to stay in the water until they were grown up. Lily looked forward to watching them grow, and once they became frogs, she learned how to catch them.

Each spring, there would be a new batch of tadpoles in the pond, and Lily would observe them to see how they were growing. Most of them would disappear after a while, but by mid summer, there would always be several big green frogs living in the pond. Lily would catch one, hold it for a little while, and then release it back into the water or put it on one of the lily pads. She loved the frogs, but over time, her interest in them declined, and after a few years, she wasn't trying to catch them much anymore.

One spring day when Lily was seven, she was playing in the trees near the pond when she discovered a mother duck sitting on a nest. She went to tell her family, and her grandma came out to look at it. The mother duck had eggs, and Grandma told Lily not to get too close to her while she was nesting. Lily kept her distance, but on her next visit, there was a row of little yellow ducklings following their mother around. Lily watched them for a while, and finally, the mother led her ducklings right into the pond where they happily swam around.

The ducks stayed near the pond for the rest of the summer. Lily watched them every time she visited, always excited to see how much they had grown. Grandma was proud of how far the pond had come, but also surprised. When she planted those water lilies, she just wanted to make the pond prettier. She didn't think it would become home to frogs, let alone a family of ducks.