Dear Jessica Brennan,
Last night Dad had a snack in bed while he watched Death in Paradise on television wearing his Bluetooth headphones. There he was all propped up on his pillows, happy as a clam eating a small plate of Aunt Isobel’s butterscotch cookies. It sounded like he was eating dog biscuits, but I didn’t say anything, well…not too much because I knew that eventually the crunching would come to an end.
“I can’t hear the TV!” Dad announces.
(CRUNCH, CRUNCH, CRUNCH)
“I don’t doubt it,” I think.
Now if your Aunty Joyce is reading this, which she probably is, she will tell you that she has no sympathy for me whatsoever and here’s why. About a hundred years ago, she and I shared a bedroom.  I think the official dimensions of this bedroom came in at about 8 feet by 9 feet with a massive closet that was approximately 12 inches deep and 18 inches wide. Now this is an important closet to mention because, not only did it have to hold all the clothes of two teenage girls, but among these clothes were things we called hand-me-downs, which refers to the dresses that Aunt Florence made for my cousin Carol who had passed them on to her sister Mary, who then passed them to our cousin Cathy and over to my sister Joyce, back to my cousin Linda and then, Aunt Janet, Linda’s mother, sent them to me. Our cousin Betty should have by rights received these relics next, but somehow in a cosmic upset, Betty always got new clothes. By the time I got these garments, the fabrics were so delicate they had to be handled like museum artifacts, I’m surprised there wasn’t a heritage protocol put in place just to unpack the box. In any case I digress.
In the room Aunty Joyce and I shared we had two single beds, two bedside tables, a three-tier plant stand, a stereo system, two 4-drawer chests of drawers, a tall standing bird cage complete with budgie, a bookshelf and usually a border collie named Jenny.  We would have let the cat in too, but you couldn’t swing a cat in there unless Jenny left.  There was no place to hide in this room.
I should describe the difference between Aunty Joyce and I.  She was smart, and I was well…lively. When she was sixteen, I was about twelve or thirteen and, coming back finally to the topic at hand, I liked to have a snack in bed. The problem with my snacks was that they were noisy, like Dad’s cookies, and my favourite snacks were chocolate pudding (ding ding ding goes the spoon against the bowl in the night) and celery.  Celery was my most favourite in-bed snack of all.  Celery was also Aunty Joyce’s least favourite snack, certainly least favourite snack to listen to.  This made me love it all the more.
Now, I mentioned that she was smart, but what I failed to tell you is that my normally non-violent sister also had very good aim and when she threw things they traveled at a velocity similar to that of a Nolan Ryan fastball.  Â
Does anyone remember Noxzema jars? They were blue and heavy glass and could pack a wallop coming at you full speed from total darkness. Â Therefore I had to master the technique of eating celery with a pillow on my head.
Last night as Dad was crunching away on his aquarium gravel while I was trying to sleep, I thought about how much I miss those Noxzema bottles. I can smell Noxzema as I write. Do they still make it?  I don’t even know.
Love Mum
xo
