A wondrous world beyond the window
If you like road trips and getting caught in the rain
The storm that came to visit South London yesterday peaked just as I’d curled up on my bed to finish reading my book. I could not have timed it better if I’d written the scene as a piece of fiction myself.
I love a good thunderstorm. It’s the visceral display of anger that I revel in. Thunder bellowing, rain pummelling. A guttural release of Mother Earth. Deliberate. A message perhaps? It’s catharsis. Perspective. To be reminded of just how small we really are. I can’t scream that loud or cry tears as fast. But it’s a permission slip to diffuse and relinquish any of your own bottled-up rage too.
In the wake of the storm, I reminisced over cosier times. My mind drifted to what I wrote about my Granny’s front room from my memories of regular childhood visits. Haven’t seen it? Take a trip and time travel into my feelings of nostalgia and then come right back.
Another fondness I have for Granny’s was leaving. Not because I didn’t enjoy it there, but I absolutely I loved the drive home.
Driving in the car at night as a child is pretty exhilarating. Turn that light off! My dad shouts from the front seat. I can’t see where I’m going! Fun stuff. What I most enjoyed about driving in the dark was catching sight of the moon. I’d scan the sky hoping for a glimpse every time, desperate to bathe under its glow. My eagerness would miraculously wane the moment we pulled up onto our driveway and I managed to fall asleep in ten seconds flat. For how much longer would someone carry me from the car to inside the house I didn’t know and wasn’t prepared to find out. Don’t hate the player, Dad, hate the game.
I was convinced the moon followed us home. How was it possible that the moon would stay in the exact same place as I looked through my window for the entire (about 15-minute) ride?! She was definitely watching over us and I couldn’t get enough.
I listened to the audiobook of Enchantment by
a couple of weeks ago and my ears pricked up when she said the following:As a child, I would look out of the window on a night time drive and think the moon was following us. From my vantage point, she seemed to be chasing us along the sky breathlessly trying to keep up. Later I learned it was just because she was so big that it felt like she was everywhere and that I was small with an outsized sense of my own importance. Still, I was left with the impression that the moon had a certain constancy. It seemed that she was attentive to my needs, concernedly checking in. Sometimes I felt like I needed her gaze.
It’s heartwarming to think that many of us looked upon the moon with the same comfort. The same innocence.
Other idyllic memories are drawn from car rides and road trips. Heading towards staycations with friends singing Left Outside Alone by Anastacia at the top of our lungs. Hours spent driving without seeing any other signs of life in the Australian outback and the Nevada desert. The familiar journey winding round country lanes coming home after 6 months in Australia. My Granddad pretending his car had ‘kangaroo petrol’ when he picked us up from school, braking at intervals down the road.
When I got my first proper job in the big city after uni, I was living at home and commuting daily to London. How people actually did this five days a week for years on end I’ll never know. My brother was also working in London and so we’d drive to the station together. The mornings were my favourite. I barely remember the drives home. Solemness, maybe. Drained and exhausted from the day. In the morning, it really was the calm before the storm. Twenty-five minutes spent hopping between villages to the nearest station as the misty dawn swept across rolling fields before us. Frost glittering all along the hedgerows leading the way. My brother’s Country and Folk playlist on to coax us out of slumber. It was a sense of peace that I often found hard to come by during those dizzying beginnings of working life.
So in a roundabout way (just always assume the pun is most definitely intended) storms and car journeys are closely linked to me. Although I wouldn’t necessarily like to be in a car through the eye of a storm, individually they both make me long for a sense of cosy warmness. Bringing just a little bit of magic along with them for the ride.