Mothers and Daughters

It was Pearlie's birthday yesterday and it was more than a little bit stressful. Hannah cooked a lovely meal, presents were shopped for, gifts carefully chosen and her favourite people invited. Did Pearlie enjoy it? Not so you'd notice. She never ate one bite of her meal. Refused ice cream in a manner that suggested she suspected I'd laced it with arsenic and, while the rest of us were trying to derive some sort of enjoyment from our food, turned to her niece and said in her most pathetic, whiniest voice,

Mergeret - will ye make me a wee bowl of panada with white bread and warm milk and a wee taste of sugar?

I said,

But we don't have any white bread.

She turned to me and snarled,

I don't know what kind of a hoose it is with no white bread!

Anyways Mergeret got the bread from Pearlie's kitchen and made her the slop and she spooned sugar over it and ate it with affected relish.

Well I won't go into details but it appeared that Pearlie was in no mood for birthdays and it all ended in tears. I did my best to keep my patience but ended up falling to the gin. And worser again ate two extra dishes of ice cream. This gin'll have to stop for it's evident it leads to harder stuff.

Now last week Matty was in despair about her best friend forgetting to take her to the chapel. Never mind it was the coldest Sunday in the world and her friend probably assumed she wouldn't want to go. Matty says to me,

I'm not going to go begging round the country for a lift to the chapel!

I spent a while last week talking her round, trying to get her to see the thing from the other person's point of view. Today I'm in despair about my relationship with Pearlie and Matty does the same job for me. And it worked. I feel much better.

That's mothers and daughters for you. Now mothers and sons - that's a whole different story.