Birthday Wishes

The door shut heavily behind her, the roar of the rain slamming down to a quiet mumble. Her clothes and body drooped with the weight of the water, weary with the morning events, tipping forwards over her knees, stretching towards the ground where they could crumble and melt into a puddle. The steady drip of rain drilling a dent into her oak flooring was only drowned out by the distant downpour outside. The sound was strangely lulling, washing over her head and humming a harmony with the drip from her clothes and long hair; she was frozen in the moment, soaking in the music of her surroundings.

Then the reverie was broken. She pressed her hands to her face, smearing the water across her skin, and up into her hair, her fingers tangling in the heavy strands. Groaning slightly, she strained up, shedding her damp layers and moving into her house.

First, the boots. They were wrenched off her feet unceremoniously, and tossed back towards the door, colliding on the ground with a booming knock, knock. The floorboards seemed to shudder slightly at the impact as they landed, weighty and wet. She felt the trembles through the soles of her feet, holding still for a moment, and looking back at the boots. They lay, discarded and separated, on opposite sides of the hall. She stared at them, her torso twisted to look, before letting out an unwilling groan and picking them up. She placed them neatly together, on the mat as to not spread the draining water all over her floor and patted them gently on the head.

Next, the coat was torn from her torso, shaken out whilst she was still over a hardwood floor, and then lightly slung over the end of a bannister, a puddle of tears landing underneath.

Then, jumper, long sleeved shirt, trousers and socks all in one, until finally, she wrenched the vest off her drenched frame, slinging the offending items into a sorry heap in the kitchen. They sat and drooped by the washing machine, crumpled together, colours swirling into one mesh of dark wet. Colour meant nothing when they were this damp, everything seemed to have faded into a grey mood.

The woman moved quickly from the hall to the lounge, darting quickly past the bay window which looked on to the street, grasping the thickly knitted blanket and soaring out of the room, blanket streaming behind her.

Out of danger of being seen in her underwear, she wrapped the thick wool around her shoulders, immediately feeling it swell a bubble of warm air around her skin. The sigh filled the air, mingling with the insistent pounding of the air, at odds with its repetitive rhythm. Her footsteps joined the orchestra of soft sounds as she moved into the kitchen, flicking the switch on the kettle and pressing play on the small speakers on the counter. They burst into life, a sweet pop song musing through her kitchen and urging her to sway lightly to the noise.

There was a soft joy in these little moments. She had the chance to be miserable at the wet and the cold when she arrived home, but she hadn’t taken it. She had pressed her hands to her face, felt the rain on her face and let the smile build in her mind. Today was not going to be one of those days where she let the weather dictate her mood, but instead, she would reshape her surroundings to her mood.

The kettle boiled.

She made a cup of tea.

She sat down – still wrapped in the blanket, still dripping the odd spot of rain on to her floor from the sodden hair.

She was content, and the rain pressed on.

The rain pressed on, and she listened to it, and closed her eyes. The sound tickling her ears, the scent of tea wrapping around her hands and spiralling up through the air…this was the day to be, and that was okay.

The morning passed in a haze of tea and books, the couch slowly sinking lower and lower, as she slouched lower and lower, delving deeper into the fiction that provided such a beautiful escape route. The rain never once let up, but simply faded to the background, blurring into the white noise of a backing track, the soundtrack to a film softly adding tension to a scene.

It was the sudden silence that made her look up, glancing at the spattering of droplets on her window. They hung there in the frozen moment, not moving any further, merely sitting on the pane of glass as though that was their intension all along.

The nicest thing about rain is that it always stops. Eventually.

She thought with a sudden shudder of gloominess. Her inner Eeyore didn’t crop up often, but he did pick his moments to really hit home.

She put the book down. The raindrops now sitting on her cheeks as well as windowpanes and moved away from the lounge. Her tea lay abandoned, not forgotten, not yet, but grew cold where it sat on the floor by the vacated couch. Her feet were quiet on the carpet in the lounge, and quieter still moving up the stairs. The world seemed to hush, the silence of sunshine breaking through the clouds, and soon even the sound of her footsteps stopped. She had reached the window in the upstairs study. From here she could see the far side of the main road, where the gothic church sat proud, with its gothic arch to match, leading proudly from the pavement into its grounds.

Scanning the grounds, she quickly found the ornament she was looking for, the shining beacon of a newly lain gravestone.

The tears were now cutting rivers down her cheeks, streaming down the path of least resistance, curving away from the point where her cheeks curved slightly, the sad smile forming on her face.

           “Happy Birthday, Mum,” she whispered out the window, hugging the blanket tighter around her. “I know you always hated the rain, but they’ll make your flowers grow so beautifully.”