Recipe for Life

Beatrice’s behaviour has become out of control. What’s a mom to do? What would the grandmother she’s named after have done?

- Glynis Scrivens

IS THIS really something you’ve created? I can’t recognise you here, Beatrice.

I’m sitting on an old wicker chair that used to belong to my grandmother. She’d sit on our front steps “watching life go by” every afternoon. Now the chair is hidden by bushes and palings in the back corner of the garden under the old apple tree. It’s not here for watching life but for hiding from it.

What’s gone wrong in your young life that could produce this den in the garden?

A den. Somewhere for a wounded animal to shelter.

And to drink, it seems. There’s an empty vodka bottle and a port bottle with a few dead flies drowned in the last dregs. Cigarette butts. Empty beer bottles.

Not all yours, of course. Your friends also hide here, running away from the reality of their own lives and the wishes of their families.

A generation in hiding. 

It’s not uncomfortable here. The old rug from the living room sits incongruously under the tree, colourful woollen grass, soft underfoot. There’s an old floral cushion. And you’ve been using my blue sleeping bag, bought for the only attempt I ever made at camping. Made colourful with a thick layer of fallen jacaranda flowers.

I’m not meant to know this place exists. And it’s taken me a few weeks to cotton onto it. The back garden is protected from prying parental eyes by tall decorative evergreen bushes we planted 20 years ago when we toyed with the idea of a hedge.

Last night’s conversation washes through my tired brain. It will be the only words from you that I hear today, I expect. But I’ve chewed them over most of the night and regurgitated them without finding any answers. I need to know more, but where will I find it?

I sip my coffee and look around me. Reminding myself not to leave my mug here, betraying my presence.