This Side of the Pond

I made it halfway through my wedding day before nature called. If you’ve never worn a voluminous dress that’s twice as wide as your own hips by the time it reaches the floor, you may not be aware that it’s a good idea to put off this moment for as long as you possibly can.

Fortunately, assistance was available in the form of my dear mum. The wedding itself took place in our own back yard with Sundance Mountain as the backdrop, under an arch of flowers hand-built by loving family, but our reception was held at Sundance Country Club. This meant I was also fortunate in having access to a relatively spacious bathroom instead of individual cubicles.

I say “relatively spacious” because there’s no such thing as “sufficiently spacious” when it comes to wedding dresses. As soon as you begin the process of deconstructing them, you realize there are several hundred layers between you and the outside world, and the creating such a structure requires at least as much fabric as the rest of your wardrobe put together.

This prompted an extended experiment that involved a lot of delving and twisting, both of us doing our best to place the dress in a configuration that would allow me to do what needed to be done. After a while, as the skirts wound themselves upwards and somehow seemed to increase in size, it felt like I’d built myself a fort to play in but hadn’t remembered to bring any toys.

Just as we were getting the hang of things, something unexpected happened. From somewhere among those many layers of material fell a small, black cricket.

He hurtled to the ground, rolled a couple of times and then sat very still, apparently dazed from the experience. Eventually, he scuttled off under the door. Mum and I just stared at him, not sure how far through this situation we really wanted to think.

I once found myself experiencing great sympathy for a bee that was exploring the balcony of a cruise ship. We’d already set off and were halfway across the English Channel, so there was no point shooing him away. I worried that he wouldn’t have had the chance to learn Spanish at school, so his experience of moving to a new country was unlikely to go well.

I had the same feeling as I watched that cricket stagger out from beneath my hemline. He hadn’t crossed an ocean, but he was still an insect. This meant he couldn’t read a map, and was unlikely to find his way home – it’s not like he’d been able to watch out of the window during the drive to the country club.

Obviously, I never did find out what happened to the cricket and I couldn’t ask him if the rolling green hills of the golf course were everything he’d ever dreamed of. But now, it’s possible I have been given an answer.

Last weekend, as I sat watching a movie in my pajamas, I felt an itch on my leg. It was sort of a buzzing tickle, not like the usual feeling when the material of your clothes brushes against you, but I didn’t think much of it.

I scratched at it and returned my attention to the movie…but then it came back. I scratched again, harder this time, and it seemed to get rid of the annoyance.

An hour later, once the end credits had rolled, it was time to retire for the night. I clambered into bed, switched out the light and began to drift off to the land of nod.

But then, the tickle came back – more urgent this time, and it also seemed to be moving around. I’m not proud it took me 90 minutes to figure out that this was no ordinary itch, but I got there in the end.

I leaped from the mattress, flailing my legs and flapping my pajama pants in a panic. I didn’t know what it was, but I did know that I didn’t want it up my trouser leg.

I’m sure you can guess what happened next: out fell a small, black cricket. He sat very still, apparently dazed from the experience. Actually, this time, I wasn’t sure he’d survived it at all.

As the rest of the house was already asleep (and I didn’t fancy trying to get the puppy settled a second time), I decided I’d sort it out in the morning and placed a lid over the cricket to keep him in place while I slept. I figured it didn’t much matter, seeing as he’d already shuffled off his mortal coil, but I wasn’t going to risk another incident.

Except he hadn’t expired at all. When I woke and lifted the lid, my cricket companion was quietly clicking his legs, waiting for his transport to arrive.

I picked him up on a piece of paper and carried him out to the yard. As he clung to the corner of a magazine page, I couldn’t help but wonder if this was the same cricket who had once made a home in my wedding dress.

All these years later and he’d made his way back – imagine the perils he must have experienced along his journey. If this had been a Disney movie, he would have been welcomed home with joyous hugs while the music swelled and his friends smiled with relief.

But this was not a Disney movie, and I still didn’t want a bug living in my clothes. His happy ending is not to be and he’ll have to make his home outside, like all the other crickets.

If this really is my old friend, though, I doubt he’ll give up. Three miles is a long, long way to travel when you’re only an inch in size, and yet there he was, clinging to my pajamas.

Somewhere in the grass of my back yard, there now lives a cricket with a plan. One of these days, I’ll find a lump in the sleeve of my cardigan or my sock will start squirming.

I wish I’d realized earlier that I might be dealing with the world’s most determined cricket – I would have taken him further away from the house. I have no desire to become a walking bug habitat, so if you ever hear me say I’m planning a vacation to Oklahoma, you’ll know right away what happened.