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epitome of incomprehensibility
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A question: what_made_you_cry_today?
Well, nothing for me - yet - but the ending of the novella You Would Have Missed Me caused some behind-the-eyes welling up. Who knew that a scene of skiing down a hill, a scene that might be in the kid narrator's imagination, could be so triumphant?
Unlike her, I never faced parental abuse or serious neglect, but skiing rescued me from a depressed funk I had at my aunt's house when I was 11. I hadn't slept most of the night before and I felt sick even though I wasn't. The worst thing: I was convinced I'd lost my imagination, even as I pictured the problem being over and me telling my friends, "That day, I lost my imagination," as if they would be able to understand.
In the morning, I stayed in my room and read. Then - okay, we're going skiing, do you want to come? after some plain lunch like a tuna sandwich. Outside in the cold I hated the wind, hated being dragged into the stinging world, but back inside, my cheeks red, I felt that I was finally "getting my imagination back" and would be able to sleep.
Anyway. In the book there's this recurring motif of a birthday song that was popular in Germany, and how the unnamed narrator's mother sings it -
We're so happy you were born,
if you weren't,
we would have missed you -
but this equally surreal and corny sentiment is countered by all the mom's statements that no, she didn't like having a kid; that the girl was always in the way, unwanted, ugly.
In the end, the girl finds her voice (in more ways than one) and switches the song's perspective: *I* am happy I was born! *You* would have missed me!
Author is Birgit Vanderbeke, title as above, translator Jamie Bulloch.
But it's rather hard to get. I would've preferred a print copy but the university bookstore flubbed the order and none of my libraries had it, so I ended up buying it from Google Play.
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