When Olivia was a toddler we were checking out our reflections in the puddles after spring downpour. She pointed to a particularly large one and exclaimed, “Rain shadow!”
Never would I have come up with such a gorgeous phrase. I know the name of that overflow of water that reflects our images after a rain. My vocabulary is too vast, too specific. I could think for a year and never come up with something as original as a rain shadow.
With so few words at their disposal, young children are natural poets. Like diamond cutters, they see the gem where others only see a clump of dirt. And so a truck-passionate boy calls the clanging ambulance a bell-van. A dad, sweaty from his morning run, is crowned the wet guy. And to the toddler who had not yet learned the word pocket, snack hole did just fine.