when Harriet met Sally

Never seen When Harry Met Sally? Where've you been all your life?!

Disagreed with its thesis? Well don't feel special. It doesn't make you any more progressive than the next person - popular opinion has always been fairly evenly divided on this one.

For ye uncultured ones, aforementioned thesis runs: 2 persons of compatible sexual orientation* can never be Just Friends. (* updated for Equity & Diversity) Of which I thought I was a proud dissident. But lately, I'm not so sure.

three's a crowd

Two VIPs (does not stand for Vasoactive Intestinal Peptides) in my life have their birthdays this week. 'Tis appropriate, if not imperative, that I inflict a little of my unabashed affection for them upon the rest of you. Just a little, I promise.

(In order of arrival on this planet - )

Other Mother
[This alias I prefer to 'Adopted Mother' for the latter seems to imply, quite misleadingly, some inadequacy on my birth mother's part.]

People need older people (for guidance, inspiration, and proof that there is life after youth). Unfortunately of these I have few. Fortunately however, this one's as value-packed as they come. Some of the most at-once-traumatic-and-beneficial things ever said to me issued, wittingly or not, from this woman. Like:

• Oh it's too late to save her. [referring to my birth mother]
• Me: Hey, don't feel sorry for me. / OM: Who feels sorry for you?
• Don't sign anything!!!
• If I didn't know better, I'd have thought it a below-the-belt one from a pathological attention seeker. [in response to one of my periodic whiny emails]

Dr Prozac - Being the only person who:

• has seen me throw up / pass out from alcohol over-consumption (well, she and whoever walked past our park bench on Matilda Bay that night);
• has come to my rescue following a motor vehicle collision (unrelated to above);
• knows (nearly) every skeleton in my big dank closet,

she cannot seriously hope to escape my surveillance in this lifetime. There is simply too much incriminating evidence at stake.

Talk about intense intimate sexless relationships. Truly, it is as enormous a wonder as it is a relief that I do not feel romantically afflicted with this woman. If she ever tries to jump the fence I would expect to be left well alone except to get blind-drunk with.

The secret to our success, IMHO, is our common penchant for laughing at ourselves, at other people, and most importantly at each other in that special nurturing way that only we have.

Beauty her name

It is. Literally translated.

You've all heard me whinge about her aplenty. A privileged few have suffered her first-hand. But did I ever mention that -

One of my earliest memories is walking with her, head barely up to her hip, arm sore from reaching for hers, and straining to keep up as well as in sync with the click-clack of her heels.

Everytime I saw her emerge from the classroom, chalk dust all over her shoulders and hands, surrounded by adoring chittering students, I thought to myself: Woah, my mum's superhero.

When I was old enough to not deface documents at will, she let me help with marking. It must've taken her longer to prepare a marking guide, supervise, and double-check - than to simply mark the lot herself. But she knew I liked 'working with' her.

She speaks like she's singing. She sings.

Her noodle soup is DA BOM. Before I learned patience and rationing and digging, she'd bury the goodies (fishballs, egg, meat, internal organs, etc.) underneath the noodles, so that I finished with goodies rather than plain noodles. Now there's a lesson for life.

She did all her clothes-shopping with me, and always gave me the final say.

We had the odd visit by vermin (no metaphor; that's a whole other post); show me a household in all of Middle Kingdom that didn't anyway. She had such a knack for cornering the speeding fur-ball and putting it out of its misery with various household items.

...

On this day, to the first woman I ever loved.