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In the weeks between school ending and university beginning in Sydney, I ran into my friend Chris who was flat-out with a new youth group he had started under the banner of St Vincent de Paul. I asked if I could come along and rocked up to my first meeting in January 1989.

The other people in the room were all guys who had gone to St Leo’s Catholic College, including Micky G, the tallest boy I had ever met, standing at six foot seven inches – 2 metres. There was colourful language and boisterous laughter. These guys were rough as guts, but here they were organising blanket and food drives for local people who were struggling. They were distributing sandwiches in Sydney city in the dead of night. They had hearts of pure gold, and they became my people.

In May, I received a phone call from one of the guys in the Vinnies group. He was distraught – Chris and Micky G had been in a car accident. Their minivan had crashed head-on into a four-wheel-drive. The jaws of life were required to get them out. Chris and Mick were rushed to Westmead hospital. Mick, with the more severe injuries, was in hospital for more than a month. I already knew he had a beautiful heart, but over the weeks he was in hospital, while he was a captive audience to this crazy girl who kept skipping uni to visit, I learned everything else I needed to know to fall in love.

Mick was one of six kids in a Catholic family. He was studying at tech and had an earring and a wicked mullet. He was extremely tall and painfully skinny He played guitar and he was cool. Way too cool for me, I thought, but the heart wants what it wants.

It was four whole months after his accident that Mick finally cottoned on that I was crushing on him. Too nervous to make any moves myself, I continued to hang around with the group, waiting and hoping. For someone so smart in other ways, Mick really was a bit dense in matters of the heart. Occasionally, when we were hanging around with our friends at the RSL, he’d point out girls to me and say, “She’s quite tall, maybe she could be the one?” Once, I lost my patience with him. I drew myself up as tall as a short person can and snapped, “And why does she have to be tall?” He replied with astonishment, “Uh – I dunno, just that I’m tall?”

And then, on the night of his 19th birthday, 1 September 1989, he pulled off a move that his mates have never let him live down – but to me was perfect. He did The Yawn. Right there in Celebrations nightclub at Hornsby RSL, after a few dollar drinks, he yawned, and stretched, and when his arm came down it was resting tentatively on my shoulder.

Mick and I began spending more and more time together. Talking with him was so easy. We laughed at the same stuff. We had some pretty robust conversations about football (me a Balmain Tigers girl, he a Magpies boy), politics and bands. Ours were both blue-collar families; we didn’t agree on everything in politics but our views and values were aligned.

One night, Mick dropped me home after we’d been out, kissed me goodbye (standing two steps down from me so I could reach his face) and made the 15-minute drive back to his house. Then our phone rang – the big curly corded unit in the front hallway, positioned so that everyone could hear every bloody word you said. It was Mick. “Go outside,” he said. “Look at the moon! It’s huge! You should see the colour of it! You’ll love it!”

There was something about this call that settled around me, soft, like a blanket. An understanding, a realisation. A certainty. This 19-year-old boy, awed by the moonrise and wanting to share it with me – he was my human being. Here he was.

That was 35 years ago, and he is still and always will be my human.

We’ve faced some storms over the years, as all of us do. But we have weathered them together, always together, even the really tough ones.

It has been such a full life, and I have had the great joy of falling in love with Mick all over again at every new stage; as a young dad, and now as a grandfather to our divine little Delilah.

Sometimes I am surprised when I catch sight of us in a shop window or a mirror, or in a candid photo. We are a bit weathered, a bit grey, life having left its mark. I’m surprised because in my heart, I still feel like that teenager who looked at the moon and knew that she had found her soul’s other half.

Your Time Starts Now: Food and Fame, Failure and Freedom: The Life story of Australia’s First MasterChef by Julie Goodwin is out now (Ebury Australia, RRP$36.99)

The Guardian