I was coming home for a weekend between handing in my thesis and taking off to Costa Rica for a few weeks. The trip was a school trip - I was taking 11 students that I once taught on a volunteer/adventure trip to Costa Rica. I was excited and this trip home was to drop off my things and pack up my room (for my move to Halifax - I had turned down a few job offers in the UK in favour for a part-time position in Halifax so that I could be closer to Walter as our relationship was growing and neither of us wanted any more long distance).
Walter and I had also discussed our parents and talking to them about our relationship. My parents were keen on me moving to Halifax without some sort of commitment. Walter and I had talked about it and we agreed that our parents should meet and discuss things before we continued any further. Since it was the only weekend we'd both be in town before the move, our parents were set to meet.
It was a whirlwind of a weekend. We flew in Friday evening and went straight to his parents' place for dinner. As we were about to sit down to eat, Walter went and turned on some traditional Indian songs (bhajans). 'That's odd', I thought to myself, I didn't realize he liked to listen to bhajans. I knew he was a bit traditional (calls his mom 'Ba' and his dad 'Bapuji' and never says mom or dad, rather mother and father), but I didn't know about the bhajans. Quirk, I thought. No big deal. His dad told me that these were his favourite bhajans and always put them on when having dinner together.
I picked him up early in the morning and we drove 2 hours to see his older brother. This brother had semi-recently been divorced (a couple of years) and he was still clearly upset by things. Understandably so as it was relatively sudden and nobody saw it coming. It was a lovely afternoon and I enjoyed getting to know his family better.
The next morning, we went over to my place and as I ran a few errands, he spoke to my parents and asked them for my hand in marriage. We had known each other for 5 months at this point. I was okay with getting engaged in the coming months and from what I knew, Walter had quirks I could live with and be flexible towards, and that overall, the relationship would be fine. He was a good person and would treat me well. I knew things weren't perfect, but they were far from terrible. What were the odds I'd find another tall, sporty, outdoorsy, musical, vegetarian, Gujarati-speaking guy? This was the right thing to do.
His family arrived soon after and both families had dinner together and got to know each other. His parents were quite a bit older and it turned out that my grandparents and his parents knew common people from back in the day. Small world!
I dropped Walter off to the airport as he headed back to Halifax (I flew out the following night) and told him I'd see him after Costa Rica. I'd miss him and was excited that my parents had agreed and that we could start planning the rest of our lives together!
It was the right thing to do...
No comments:
Post a Comment