Weathering The Storm

The last thing I wanted to do was go outside . . .

IGIRD my loins – well, I slide my feet into my old Crocs – and prepare to do battle. A loud clap of thunder makes me jump away from the back door as the kitchen lights up in that brilliant white light that only comes with thunderstorms.

“I can do this, Marty,” I tell my faithful hound, even though my heart’s pounding and my mouth is drier than a bag of sawdust.

I’ve always been scared of storms.

I’ve progressed slightly from hiding under the table, but I’m not, and never have been, someone who stands at the window watching.

I just want to feed the hedgehogs.

I have a feeding station in the shed, all loaded up with tasty treats for the prickly ones that are starting to wake from hibernation.

The lightning is constant and thunder growls like something ill tempered.

“It’s just God moving his furniture about,” my mum used to tell me. “Like I do every so often.”

She was always changing the rooms around. Mum was a restless soul.

I just have to time it right and I can nip to the shed, grab the feeding station and put it in its usual place.

I open the door and step outside.

Marty rushes out and does a victory lap around the garden. He’s never minded storms.

If anything, he gets a buzz out of them. Sometimes he’ll bark at the noise, but it’s not through fear.

Marty will bark at anything: a noisy pigeon, a cat fight in the street or the rattle of the letter-box.

I get halfway to the shed when there’s an almighty crash and the whole sky turns white.

Even Marty is shocked, as he’s lit up like the star turn on stage at the Apollo.

We bolt for the back door as car alarms go off all around.

I run so fast, I leave my Crocs behind and end up with wet feet.

I slam the back door shut and lean against it, breathing hard.

Another crash makes the house shake and more alarms go off.

“It’s like the end of the world,” I tell Marty, but he stands there wagging his tail.

I have to feed the hedgehogs. They need it after last year.

It was a bad time for all wildlife, with the poor crows looking as if they were panting as they searched for water and bumblebees collapsing in fuzzy heaps.

I put out bowls of water everywhere.

I started putting food out as soon as I saw the first hardy hedgehogs were on the move, and I’ll keep feeding them until winter.

“I’ll try again in a while,” I tell Marty, but the storm rages on and the car alarms keep going off and the house shakes.

Mum was always baffled by my fear of thunderstorms. I can see her in my mind, standing at the window, looking out over the sea.

I’d peep out at her now and then to see her silhouetted by a flash of white.

“Wow! That was spectacular. Come and see, Jude.”

“I don’t want to,” I’d say as I buried myself under a blanket.

My childhood canine companion, Duchess, was frightened of storms, too, but if she could hide under a blanket, she calmed down.

It didn’t work for me. I wanted to like storms, I really did. I wanted to be brave and stand at the window as the sky lit up, but I couldn’t.

Once, at work during a big storm, I hid under my desk. I heard my boss come into my office looking for me.

He had words with me later on about abandoning my desk and said I shouldn’t pop out during working hours.

I took the telling-off. I couldn’t tell him I had been there all along.

My husband is in bed, oblivious. Gavin would sleep through an earthquake.

He knows I don’t like storms, and if he was up he’d feed the hedgehogs for me, but I won’t wake him.

He has an early start tomorrow. It wouldn’t be fair.

The storm seems to have calmed down a bit, so I make a dash for the shed.

I’ve barely got there before it crash-bangs again and the shed door slams shut.

I have my feeding station ready to put in its usual place; I just don’t have the courage to step out with it.

I don’t know where my Crocs are. Somewhere out there between shed and kitchen.

My feet are wet anyway. And cold.

I feel something warm and furry against my leg and almost scream, but then a flash lights up the inside of the shed and I see my faithful pooch standing at my side.

I try to open the door, but the latch must have dropped. This side of it is broken and no amount of finger waggling will lift it on the other side.

I think of Mum. She always felt trapped in our tiny fisherman’s cottage. She yearned for space to stretch her wings.

She felt weighed down by Dad’s long hours at work and her own long hours at a job she hated.

The day she left, she held me in her arms and said she was sorry, but she had to find her adventure.

A loud crash makes me

squeal, but the memories persist.

I loved her so much. If she turned up on my doorstep right now, I’d hug her and never let her go.

I often wonder if she found her adventure.

This little house with its small wild garden that provides shelter to all kinds of birds, mammals and insects is my adventure.

Who needs a pristine lawn and fancy flower borders when you have a garden humming with bees and alight with butterflies?

I’ve always wondered if I would be a terrible mother. What if I abandoned my husband and child?

Gavin says he knows I wouldn’t do that, but did Dad ever know that Mum was likely to take off?

I’ve been feeding these birds, squirrels, hedgehogs and foxes since we moved in a few years ago. I never let them down and I never will.

I am not the same as my mother.

There’s a clap and a flash and my insides feel molten.

I’m glad Marty is with me, but I can’t stay here all night, shivering from cold and fear in my pyjamas.

Then a light comes on and I peer through the shed window to see Gavin moving about the kitchen.

He comes outside and looks around and I tap on the window, but another rumble drowns me out.

He looks down at where I usually put the feeding station, then lightning lights up my lost Crocs.

He hurries down to the shed and opens the door and I fall into his arms.

He keeps his arm around me and takes the feeding station that he made and puts it in its rightful place.

“You should have woken me,” he says sleepily. “You’re scared of storms.” I am, but I’m still here. Somehow – I don’t know how – the storm has made me realise I can be a good mother.

Gavin will be over the moon when I tell him I’m ready to start that family I always said I didn’t want.

It’s time for another adventure. ■