Housewife Up

"Heaven save us from ourselves. And if you can’t manage that, I’d settle for saving me from me. Just when I thought it was safe to go back in the water, here I am again, drowning for all to see. Not waving, as the troubled swimmer once famously said. I busied myself with any household task I could find . . ." Recently widowed but putting a brave face on it all (thanks to a not insignificant windfall) Helen’s only problem, it seems, is the imminent arrival of her fortieth birthday. Not something