Showcase: All In The Blink Of An Eye + The Thunderstorm + Grandmother

Edited By Molly Ovenden

When I told my husband I’m working with so many amazing pieces of writing on the theme of Nostalgia for this July Showcase, he nodded solemnly, shaking his head, and said: “Nostalgia: it’s not what it used to be.” I groaned. He laughed.

A couple of days later, we spent the afternoon with his dad. Since I’ve been in this nostalgic mindset with you all, I shared this Showcase project with him, too. He nodded solemnly, shaking his head, and said: “Nostalgia: it’s not what it used to be.” I groaned, rolling my eyes. My husband laughed and nudged me. My father-in-law laughed and flashed me a cheeky grin.

Last week, we considered the journeys we make to explore our heritage and some about fatherly figures who came before us. This week, we have pieces from three writers whose words draw us into the natural world and consider some mothering figures who lived generations before us. I wonder what nature and family memories will come to mind for you as you experience these words?

As I read the following pieces, I remember watching, with my dad, a deer leap over our fence at dawn. We were in awe as it bounded along the lake’s edge. I remember gasping with my mom as an oriole, rare in our region, landed on the cut oranges we had hung on our birch trees, hoping for just such an encounter as this.

Our first piece, a poem by Gloria Maloney, pulls us into an intimate experience with nature’s wildness and the magical connections we share with each other in the company of wildlife.

All In The Blink Of An Eye

Standing in our special place
where the rim of the sky greets the hand of the sea
A memory stirs, my father steadying my shaking hand
His voice, rhythmic, soothing balm
“Close your eyes, feel nature’s membrane
pulsing against your skin”
Whoosh – the air moves across my palm
Frisson wings folding time into avian beats
Seal brown mud and grit between his claws,
carried from ancient shores
Sea spray songs of distant lands
Salt tang sings in my mouth
Worry time slips from my rushing mind
A vacancy opens; stillness invites herself in,
surveys the scene of a bird on the wing
I feel flights of dizzying heights,
grasslands tilting, cliff edges crumbling
I witness infinite beauty
encapsulated in the palm of my hand,
captured in a small moment of time
My father was and still is my anchor
in this fast – paced world
I take my daughter’s hand
“Close your eyes, feel nature’s membrane
pulsing against your skin
Let the magic begin”

© Gloria Maloney, 2026

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Nature is magical. Even writers can be at a loss for words in the wildness of it. For, much as we write about our relationship with nature, much is still left out there: on the hillsides, in the woods, at the seaside. So many powerful memories press themselves into our minds without making it to the page.

Growing up in the States, in Minnesota, I experienced a lot of severe weather: straight line winds, tornadoes, flash floods, crazy thunderstorms, green-skied hailstorms. The local authorities blare warning sirens for citizens to seek shelter. I have countless fond memories of spending thunderstorms in the basement with snacks and card games, listening to the crackling storm radio with spare batteries.

Next, we have some prose. Jo Renton creates vivid depictions of her time on an aeroplane in the middle of a literal and emotional storm.

The Thunderstorm

As a child, I still half-believed the explanation given in one of Grimm’s Fairy Tales my mother used to read to me: that thunder was just the noise of the giants in the sky having a game of bowls. I found it exciting when the lightning flashed and all the creatures normally enclosed in the generous folds of the hobgoblin curtains in my large Victorian bedroom, practically came to life.

Later on, I learned that it was important to count the seconds between the flashes of lightning and the claps of thunder to see how far away the storm actually was.

I remember, too, when I was older, standing under a tree for shelter, although not with my back against the trunk, of course; wondering at the sheer volume of rain that was falling all around me and even dripping through the leaves above me. It was magical. Each blade of grass and each leaf on the trees and hedges was shining. The world was being washed clean. Even in smoggy, smoky London, the pavements and rooftops would glisten anew.

It was during my childhood I experienced the most magical thunderstorms, but back then, everything was magical, except perhaps spelling tests at school and learning multiplication tables. But it wasn’t until well into my adulthood I was to witness the most dramatic situation involving a thunderstorm.

Our little break in the Canaries was drawing to a close when the news reached us my mother had died. Her death was not entirely unexpected but it was too soon, much too soon.

I became frantic to get back to England as soon as possible and my prayers actually seemed to be answered when the kindly airline staff, on hearing of my predicament, allowed me to travel in the small seat in the cockpit behind the pilots. The plane had otherwise been completely full.

It was late evening when we took off, and I was so mesmerised watching the lights of the runway from this completely different viewpoint, I hardly noticed the twilight was becoming ever deeper, blacker and ever more threatening.

By this time, the clouds were so dark and thick, there was no reassuring pale moon or twinkling stars to be seen – just the pitch blackness of the night. Our plane seemed so small and insignificant in the scheme of things, even when we’d reached our highest altitude of 35 thousand feet.

We could now see the anvil tops of the five-mile-high cumulonimbus clouds that had formed and suddenly, with just a single angry growl, the storm broke. It was a wonderful light show, reminding me of a concert at Wembley, but a hundred times more powerful. The lightning danced in jagged forks from one anvil top to the other at a speed so fast as to be almost instantaneous. These were followed almost immediately by huge claps of thunder. There was definitely no need for counting the seconds; we were in the eye of the storm.

A notice came over the tannoy: there may be some turbulence and could everyone remain in their seats and strap themselves in. I had two shoulder-to-waist straps forming a diagonal cross over me, so from that point of view, I felt safe enough.

Then came the turbulence; sudden and violent. We must have hit an air pocket as we seem to have dropped like a stone for at least a couple of hundred feet, then we started to be tossed around like a cork in a rough sea.  People were crying out and being sick back in the cabins, but the cockpit was in its own silent world with just the wide instrument panel illuminating the interior and the raging storm outside. I began to imagine we were in the thick gaseous atmosphere of Jupiter and no longer tied to Earth. I remembered that there, on that giant planet, endless storms swirled with winds reaching speeds of 400 miles an hour. I shuddered.

Then, as suddenly as it all began, the skies began to clear, the claps of thunder seemed further away and the lightning was no longer in the form of vicious, piercing forks, but was now just increasingly distant, innocuous sheet lightning.  A star or two began to push its way between the clouds, which didn’t seem quite so dark any more. We all breathed a sigh of relief and the sound of clapping and cheering came from the cabin behind us. The pilots smiled at one another in acknowledgement of a job well done. They’d steadfastly kept to their course and we were less than ten minutes behind schedule!

At Gatwick, we had to circle until the plane was grudgingly given a belated slot. “Just as well,” remarked one of the pilots after we had at last landed safely on the tarmac. “We didn’t have much fuel left – not enough to go round again!” ‘Just one of the little secrets they keep from the passengers,’ I thought wryly.

What a send-off for my mother! I like to think, too, it was she who’d helped to keep us safe during that dramatic flight.

I wonder who came to mind as you read about the thunderstorm. Did you look out your window to check the sky, as I did? I wonder if you remembered flights through turbulent weather. Perhaps there’s an element of nature that reminds you of a loved one. Or maybe, memories have surfaced about a loved one who is a force of nature?

(c) Jo Renton, 2026

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As a typewriter poet, I’ve received many requests to write poems to honour people’s grandparents for birthdays, in memoriam and with gratitude. For our third and final piece, Mary L Walsh introduces readers to a vibrant woman with a nostalgic creative portrait of a poem.

Grandmother

My grandmother wore rings
that never quite belonged –
too small, biting her fingers,
too large, swinging loose
on a chain.

She told people to bugger off
without apology.

She wore bell-bottom jeans –
loons, she called them –
acres of denim flaring wide,
sometimes catching her out in a high wind
Cheesecloth shirts, flowers in her hair,
bare feet.

Some days she sang
Give Peas a Chance,
then laughed at herself.

“Here, kids,” she’d whisper,
“Did you hear why the dolphin blushed?”
“Because of the seaweed, of course!”
Then she’d cackle
and give us a fluff-covered humbug
from her pocket.

Mum said that’s what happens
when mothers become grandmothers:
the edges soften,
the worries loosen,
sending the grandchildren home
when they’ve had enough.

She could be mad,
and fierce with love.

© Mary L Walsh, 2026 

Connect with Mary on Instagram: @marelwa60

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What a beautiful way to be remembered: fierce with love. When we look back at our family members and the moments we shared with them, I wonder what comes to mind for you. As I consider the memories these writers have shared with us, I can’t help but desire to be intentional about the moments I share with loved ones.

Every present moment, we can capture its beauty on a walk, through a conversation, or through reminiscing about the good ol’ days with people we care about. How might we look back at our present moments with fondness in the future? ‘Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be,’ but I do wonder what it could be for us.

Moving into next week, let us keep our thoughts wistful, joyful, curious, hopeful and memory-filled as we carry on looking back together and continue our month of nostalgia in week four’s Showcase.

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