Wendyl Nissen: Organic decay

"It's cancer. Ovarian cancer. I'm riddled with it," said the older woman behind me.

It's not something you expect to hear as you are idling away your time at Wellington Airport, but there it was. Out there.

She and I were the only customers in a shop which sells natural, organic beauty products. I was in seventh heaven, the other woman clearly wasn't.

She was trying to find something to clear her sinuses, a product her husband later found next door at Whitcoulls.

I knew all this because I'm a dreadful eavesdropper. Have been all my life.

The woman working in the shop had obviously sensed some tension in this customer's voice, as did I, thinking that she had some pre-flight nerves.

The shop woman invited her to have a seat and immediately started massaging her hands and neck, talking to her softly - and that's when she came upon the lump on her neck.

"What's this?" she said. And that's when three women in one shop in Wellington Airport felt the awkward silence when someone says "cancer" out loud. One of us was dying.

I paused mid-examination of a lipstick, took a breath and closed my eyes. The woman with the lump said nothing and the woman giving the massage moved the conversation on deftly.

She asked her where she was flying to, discussed the destination and then, when her customer's husband rejoined her, set about making them both feel like they were the most interesting and most wonderful people she had ever met.

"You two just have an energy about you," she said, massaging away. "You just have to tell me how you met."

Ten minutes later I was on my second round of the shelves, unable to leave, unable to stop eavesdropping when the couple left, waving fondly as if leaving a close relative, no longer the sad, tense people who had arrived in the shop.

"You made her feel fantastic," I said to the woman. "That was so nice of you."

She looked at me as if to say, "Who wouldn't?"

I got out my credit card and attempted to buy the entire contents of the shop.

Later that day I visited my local health shop, the one I've shopped at for 20 years despite always being made to feel like a white, middle-aged woman who "dabbles" in health foods.

On many occasions I have wanted to scream "My sandals may not be made out of recycled tyres, and I may have washed my hair this month, but I eat brown rice and I know what rejuvelac is," just to wipe the smug smiles off their faces.

"Could you help me please?" I asked the woman who was manning the naturopath end of the shop.

"I am mixing," she sternly replied, as if I had just interrupted an ancient ritual of witch-like proportions. What she was actually doing was putting some bottles away. I moved off to wait. She answered the phone and chatted amiably.

I waited some more. Another woman hovered. "She's busy," I told her.

Then another woman joined us. Three women in a shop. One of us might have been riddled with cancer.

"Not you, she's first," the shop woman instructed as she signalled me to talk.

"We don't have it," she then snapped.

"My friend bought it here yesterday."

She stomped off, found it, and thrust the bottle at me.

I didn't thank her. I drove home wondering how two shops selling products targeted at people who have either a genuine need or simply a desire to live a healthier, more healing, organic lifestyle could treat people so differently.

Before I left Wellington Airport I went back to the beauty products shop, which is called Essity, to retrieve a bag I had left behind.

"What's your name?" I asked the woman in the shop.

"Susan," she replied.

Ask for her next time you're in Wellington.

www.wendylsgreengoddess.co.nz