Saving wasted

Ever had a birthday meltdown?

I used to have them EVERY birthday.  The big day would come around and I’d just want to stay in bed all day and think bad thoughts, like ‘How come nobody likes me? and ‘Why do some of my family members act like I’m speaking in ancient Yiddish?’.

Anyway the other day, Ms M turned sixteen, and SHE had a birthday meltdown.

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY M darling!!!”

“…Mmmm, yeah, guess so..”   CLICK. That’s the sound of Ms M hanging up on me – she was at her dad’s at the time.

So I wasn’t that surprised when I picked her up from the movies and she began to cry in the car, because, she said,

“I’ve wasted everything! I’m so stupid!”

Hmm, I thought, that sounds like a bit of an overstatement.  I know you’ve missed a few deadlines at school.  You probably don’t walk the dog as often as you should.  But everything, wasted?   I mean, at fifty, that could make sense.  At 16, there’s plenty of time to turn the boat around.

So we bought some Turkish takeaway (sniff, sob, wipe) and headed home on Birthday Night, in full crisis mode.  But then things started to go better.

The cure?  Take one electrically warmed bed, one mother & daughter, 2 slices of baklava, 2 half-empty miniature bottles of liqueur (doesn’t matter much what sort), a bowlful of hugs, a lot of listening and a sprinkle of bad jokes – combine, and voila!

Turned out it wasn’t Life that had been wasted – merely Dad’s birthday present money.  On Essence of Female, which I have really GOT to try, and a few other odd things Ms M and her best friend picked up at the herbalist for – well, about all the cash she had on her.

There really aren’t many things in life that can’t be fixed by an electric blanket, a small amount of alcohol, and cuddles.

Today’s Indie Review

It’s hard to know what to expect of the afterlife. Even, whether there IS one.  I tend to think not.  But, suppose there is.  And suppose,when you get there, that whatever problems you had in life are still waiting to be confronted? This is the theme of Karen Wyle’s Wander Home.  It’s about a multi-generational family who find themselves in ‘heaven’ but still have to work through some of their family issues – the abandoned daughter, the moody, restless single mother who walks out on her, the peripatetic parents and the crazy-in-love grandparents.  It’s actually quite a cohesive picture of how an afterlife might work, in practice, and well-written, without the stylistic issues you find (sadly) in a lot of e-books.