Not long after I became engaged, my fiancé and I began discussing plans for our future: where we would live, how we would set up our bank accounts, whether we’d rent a house for a while or purchase one, the type of wedding ceremony we’d have considering that we were a “mature” couple. Toward the end of one of those conversations it occurred to me that there was another important matter we needed to address.
“You should come home with me to meet my parents,” I said.
It was mid October. My parents lived one state away. It was an easy two-and-a- half-hour drive to their home. I visited them for all the major holidays and sometimes in between. The next time I planned to see them was Thanksgiving.
“Sure,” my fiancé said, “I was thinking the same thing.”
As I mentally marked off the days on the calendar I looked forward to Thanksgiving with a nervous giddiness I hadn’t felt before. My parents would get to meet the bookish man I had met in my Adult Sunday School class, who I had fallen in love with over long talks about scripture, the novels we had read, the experiences we had had as journalists, and the respective writing projects we were pursuing.
My fiancé would become acquainted with my parents, who had celebrated 50-plus anniversaries and were a testament to what it took to make a marriage work. Through getting to know them he would develop a deeper understanding of me. He would also get to meet some of my extended family, which would offer him a glimpse of the type of gatherings he’d be a part of once we married.
I imagined that on Thanksgiving Day I would be in the kitchen helping my mother prepare the stuffing and candied yams while my father and my fiancé would watch football on the large-screen television in the basement.
At some point after the meal, my mother would pull out my baby album and be sure to show my fiancé the 1960s Polaroid snapshot of me wearing nothing but a smile on a miniature bear skin rug. She’d regale him with stories about what a champ I was at filling up my diaper to indicate how pampered and well fed I was, and my penchant for sending my glass baby bottles crashing to the kitchen floor from my high chair once I’d finished with them.
But the week of Thanksgiving, my father came down with a cold. My mother insisted that he stay in bed and only get up when Thanksgiving dinner was served–so much for my father and my fiancé bonding over football. My fiancé had to cheer on his favorite teams by himself.
A cousin and aunt joined us for the meal. Afterward, we women gathered in the kitchen for pumpkin streusel, coffee, and an intense discussion about the decisions that needed to be made about one of my aunts being considered for hospice care. By the time the conversation ended, the football games were over. I went looking for my fiancé. I feared he was bored, wishing he had stayed home. I thought he might feel that I wasn’t being a good hostess.
He wasn’t in the basement. The lights and television were off. I jogged up the stairs to the second floor and found him there in my old room. He was stretched out on my bed, his brow in a knot as he read the pages of a book. He’d taken his glasses off and held the tip of one arm between pursed lips.
“Are you okay?” I asked softly.
He peered up at me over the top of the book. I moved in closer to see what it was, a soft-cover volume, The Book of Psalms. My fiancé’s eyes were wide like those of a child who’d just discovered where all the Christmas presents were hidden.
“Can I borrow this?” he said, urgency in his voice.
I looked around him. The bed was littered with books. My books. He’d discovered them in my headboard that doubled as a bookcase.
They were all books I had read when I was in high school. I hadn’t thought about them in years. It turns out that he thought they were refreshing, a treasure trove into my past. The Art of Shyness, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and I Can Do Anything Career Book for Girls were among them. Through the yellowed pages he discovered the shy, socially awkward teenager who spent long weekend hours with books that provided her with an escape, that helped her understand the world around her, that guided her as she explored the career possibilities she would pursue in the not-too-distant future. Through my old books, my fiancé got to know me as the girl whose passion for reading would grow into a passion for writing. He got to know me that Thanksgiving Day on a level that months of dating couldn’t have accomplished.
We stayed up late into the night, lounging on my bed, books all about us, and talking– not about family or wedding details, houses or bank accounts–but about books.
“You should come home with me to meet my parents,” I said.
It was mid October. My parents lived one state away. It was an easy two-and-a- half-hour drive to their home. I visited them for all the major holidays and sometimes in between. The next time I planned to see them was Thanksgiving.
“Sure,” my fiancé said, “I was thinking the same thing.”
As I mentally marked off the days on the calendar I looked forward to Thanksgiving with a nervous giddiness I hadn’t felt before. My parents would get to meet the bookish man I had met in my Adult Sunday School class, who I had fallen in love with over long talks about scripture, the novels we had read, the experiences we had had as journalists, and the respective writing projects we were pursuing.
My fiancé would become acquainted with my parents, who had celebrated 50-plus anniversaries and were a testament to what it took to make a marriage work. Through getting to know them he would develop a deeper understanding of me. He would also get to meet some of my extended family, which would offer him a glimpse of the type of gatherings he’d be a part of once we married.
I imagined that on Thanksgiving Day I would be in the kitchen helping my mother prepare the stuffing and candied yams while my father and my fiancé would watch football on the large-screen television in the basement.
At some point after the meal, my mother would pull out my baby album and be sure to show my fiancé the 1960s Polaroid snapshot of me wearing nothing but a smile on a miniature bear skin rug. She’d regale him with stories about what a champ I was at filling up my diaper to indicate how pampered and well fed I was, and my penchant for sending my glass baby bottles crashing to the kitchen floor from my high chair once I’d finished with them.
But the week of Thanksgiving, my father came down with a cold. My mother insisted that he stay in bed and only get up when Thanksgiving dinner was served–so much for my father and my fiancé bonding over football. My fiancé had to cheer on his favorite teams by himself.
A cousin and aunt joined us for the meal. Afterward, we women gathered in the kitchen for pumpkin streusel, coffee, and an intense discussion about the decisions that needed to be made about one of my aunts being considered for hospice care. By the time the conversation ended, the football games were over. I went looking for my fiancé. I feared he was bored, wishing he had stayed home. I thought he might feel that I wasn’t being a good hostess.
He wasn’t in the basement. The lights and television were off. I jogged up the stairs to the second floor and found him there in my old room. He was stretched out on my bed, his brow in a knot as he read the pages of a book. He’d taken his glasses off and held the tip of one arm between pursed lips.
“Are you okay?” I asked softly.
He peered up at me over the top of the book. I moved in closer to see what it was, a soft-cover volume, The Book of Psalms. My fiancé’s eyes were wide like those of a child who’d just discovered where all the Christmas presents were hidden.
“Can I borrow this?” he said, urgency in his voice.
I looked around him. The bed was littered with books. My books. He’d discovered them in my headboard that doubled as a bookcase.
They were all books I had read when I was in high school. I hadn’t thought about them in years. It turns out that he thought they were refreshing, a treasure trove into my past. The Art of Shyness, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and I Can Do Anything Career Book for Girls were among them. Through the yellowed pages he discovered the shy, socially awkward teenager who spent long weekend hours with books that provided her with an escape, that helped her understand the world around her, that guided her as she explored the career possibilities she would pursue in the not-too-distant future. Through my old books, my fiancé got to know me as the girl whose passion for reading would grow into a passion for writing. He got to know me that Thanksgiving Day on a level that months of dating couldn’t have accomplished.
We stayed up late into the night, lounging on my bed, books all about us, and talking– not about family or wedding details, houses or bank accounts–but about books.
