When we were little my parents rarely gave us dessert. Dessert was a piece of fruit or nothing and I recall keeping Christmas or birthday sweets for months afterwards hanging them up in a big up at the end of my bed and taking one piece out very occasionally and savouring its taste and feeling the sugar hit course through my body. When I would get a tiny bit of pocket money, even 10 cents I would go straight to the corner store and stand in front of the display chewing my lip and biting my thumbnail deep in thought as to how best spend my hard begged ahem I mean earned money. Red frogs were always a good choice but I also liked Redskins and Toffee Apple bars because they seemed to last forever.

One day when my parents went to visit one of my mother’s friends. I found most adults quite strange and creepy and they would always lean down and cluck “She’s becoming a big girl isn’t she! But so skinny!” and I would recoil and feel slightly nauseous at the thought. I didn’t want to grow up and I certainly didn’t want to be examined as if I were on a sample on a petri dish by my parent’s friends. It felt icky and they always said it in a way that gave me the heebeejeebies as if it were planning to cook me and eat me.

Anyway, one of my mother’s friends was one of the adults that I liked. And do you know why? Well, she owned a corner store and one day my parents popped in to see her with my sister and I. This woman also refrained from commenting about how big I had grown (and therefore wasn’t likely to eat me) plus she uttered the very best words my sister and I could have ever heard. “Help yourself to anything that you want girls” she said smiling. She must have seen us looking around her store wide eyed devouring the sweets and ice creams with our eyes and our glance settling on row after row of colourful packaging. She seemed to stock everything and the boxes of treats reached up to the ceiling to the heavens.

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When I first started dating Mr NQN his mother Tuulikki lived in Coffs Harbour. She would ring him frequently worried that her eldest son was living far away from her in Sydney and seeing a girl she had not met. He was notorious for being a poor communicator with her and she was the kind of personality that couldn’t quite understand that her son didn’t want to be interrogated about his new girlfriend. So she kept prodding and talking and asking questions about me and he would offer up one word tight-lipped tidbits like “Yep” or “No” to her innumerable questions. I would listen and wonder how a person could talk to so much without taking breath once.

Her standard greeting when calling was “Hello? So anyway…” and out would tumble an entire week’s worth of conversation and questions. This would prompt the very strong and silent Mr NQN to fasten his bottom lip to his top and keep quiet. I even witnessed a conversation where he put down the phone on the table, got himself a drink, drank it, flicked through some mail and picked it back up minutes later only to have her still talking having not missed a beat nor noticed.

As he was stonewalling her for information, she sought information out different ways. She wanted my star sign and time of birth so that she could construct an astrological chart for us so that she could see the potential for our relationship. She hounded him for days for this information and he finally capitulated with the correct date but the wrong time as we didn’t know it.

Shortly later she sent through a chart for both of us detailing out future together as told by the starsigns. And if anyone should ever dip their toe in the Elliott family no matter how casually or hesitatingly, you can be sure that she will ask for your birth date and time.  Cue Mr NQN and his brother who will then make jokes and snicker about “looking for Uranus” (boys!). Although I don’t quite believe that you can have a horoscope that fits one twelfth of the population there is no denying that I do befit the characteristics of Taurus.

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