Where Waters Run Deep

Margaret stood at the edge of Miller's Pond, the same spot where she and Ruthie had skipped stones seventy years ago. Her reflection showed silver hair curling softly around her face—a far cry from the golden braids she'd worn that summer they turned twelve, the summer everything changed.

The water lapped gently against the shore, carrying fragments of memory like leaves on its surface. Margaret remembered Ruthie's hair then—dark and wild, always escaping its ribbons as they raced through the fields behind their houses. "Your hair's got a mind of its own," Ruthie's mother would say, laughing as she tried to tame it with combs and promises.

"Just like Ruthie," Margaret had whispered back.

Now, at seventy-eight, Margaret visited the pond weekly. Ruthie was gone now—five years this spring—but her friendship lived in every ripple, every stone, every memory they'd made here. Margaret still brought Ruthie's favorite blanket, spreading it on the grass as if her friend might appear with raspberry tarts and stories about her grandchildren.

"You know what's funny?" Margaret said aloud to the empty air, something she'd started doing since Arthur passed. "We worried so much about our hair then. Curls that wouldn't curl, bangs that wouldn't lie flat. Now I look in the mirror and see my mother, see her mother, see every woman who carried me here."

The water seemed to listen. Margaret had learned that water held wisdom—the way it found its path around obstacles, how it could be gentle and fierce, how it returned and returned, like the best kind of love.

Her granddaughter Emma had visited yesterday, asking about the old photograph of two girls by this very pond. "Was Grandma Ruthie your best friend?" Emma had asked, touching the faded image.

"She was the sister God forgot to give me," Margaret had answered. "We shared everything—secrets, scars, dreams. Some friends come for a season. Others become part of your story."

Margaret dipped her hand in the cool water, feeling the connection—past and present, loss and love, all flowing together. Ruthie's voice echoed in her heart: "This water's seen everything, Mags. Our first loves, our heartbreaks, our children growing up. It'll still be here when we're gone."

And that was the comfort, wasn't it? Some things—like true friendship, like the grace of age, like this old pond—ran deeper than time. Margaret closed her eyes, grateful for the silver hair that crowned her journey, for the friend who had walked beside her, and for the water that held them both.