Today I had a day off, and went out to see Marion’s place in Outer (but pretty) Suburbia. I took some flowers (my mother’s years of relationship advice were not for nought), and we ate at the local café. She had pumpkin soup, but afterwards tasted of garlic. I can’t figure that one out. As I have undoubtedly offended many people with my garlickey habits, I didn’t let it bother me. But pumpkin soup?

We went back to her place, and because I had arrived so late, her brother soon arrived home from school. Immediately before that she got an amusing phone call from her mother (who works as a teacher) asking if she should come home or not (for she had been informed that I was coming that day). Marion said it was didn’t matter when her mother came home. Then we went for quite a long walk along the creek which was very attractive and gave us many opportunities to smooch. As we arrived back at her home, her mother was just pulling in. Luckily her mother had been at a meeting and wasn’t just being ‘discreet’.

It’s said that a woman’s mother is what she’ll look like in however many years time. In this case, Marion’s mother pretty much looks like Marion does now, with an extra wrinkle or two and dyed hair. From what I learned about her mother, Marion seems to have inherited her looks, hairstyle, musical instrument, language specialty, penchant for cryptic crosswords and television watching habits from her. The clincher was when her mother talked of aggravating her tennis elbow from playing the music to Pride & Prejudice, something Marion also does to fill a spare hour. I’m sure there are plenty of differences between them... it’s just that the similarities were so striking.

So Marion and I were sitting at the kitchen bench doing today’s cryptic crossword (and may I say we were a very good team), while her mother prepared dinner. I’m usually reasonably good at making conversation, but I couldn’t find anything to latch on to, and her mother didn’t seem very talkative. So there were periods of silence, a little more awkward than the occasional periods of silence between Marion and myself. The exception was when I said “One reason I was late today was that I had to see if the DVDs that arrived from Amazon this morning worked on my DVD player.” Realising that what was started had to be finished I admitted sotto voce that it was my Gilmore Girls DVD. Is this the sort of thing one’s girlfriend’s mother wants to know on first meeting? We were both sitting very chastely on our stools (we were a bit shy about getting up to much in front of her mother), with a bit of hand-holding down below. When we got involved in the crossword and leaned in together, her mother looked at us without saying anything but with a pleased expression on her face (not unlike her daughter does sometimes). Parenting must be quite a trip. I had a rehearsal, so I took the train back to the big smoke.

Epilogue: I apologised to Marion for not being very talkative with her mother, and her mother apologised to her for (and I quote the text message) “...not making much conversation- she didn’t want you to think she was too nosy!!!” I’m sure we’ll get past our coyness soon enough...

Here’s an interesting entry I’ve been reading by .

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