What every little girl dreams of?

The only thing that sucks worse than being out of your home country for your favorite patriotic holiday (ok, favorite holiday period, but it being a patriotic one means it definitely won't be celebrated anywhere else) is being away from your spouse on your wedding anniversary. And the only thing that sucks worse than that is spending said wedding anniversary with people who refuse to acknowledge that it is in fact your anniversary.

You see, my in-laws cling steadfastly to the idea that our wedding anniversary is October 2^nd, the date of our Indian wedding. For one, I would not have selected that date for us even with a gun pointed at my head. October 2^nd is Gandhi’s birthday and therefore a popular date in India for all things “auspicious". Something akin to all Americans wanting their children to be born on George Washington’s birthday. Not that any of us know when that is exactly, but you get the picture.

Most importantly, our Indian wedding was in no way legally binding. Even the Indian government would not recognize us as having been married on that day. There’s no certificate, there’s no legal documentation of any sort. It was essentially just the world’s most boring and expensive party. And an ambush at that. Like a surprise party that requires you to do all of the work and have none of the fun.

So when my in-laws called us this past October 2^nd to wish us a happy anniversary, I bit back any snarky comments and kept my responses as non-committal as possible. I managed (I think) to sound appreciative of what they were saying without actually agreeing that it was our anniversary.

When my husband and I began discussing this trip, we knew it would be difficult for me to be gone over this weekend. No cookout or fireworks on the 4^th of July!? Blasphemy! Oh, and the anniversary…yeah I knew I would miss him even more on that day. But we suspected that if I waited until after this weekend to come to India, something would likely come up and the trip would never happen. So we’d sacrifice one anniversary together in favor of a lifetime together improved by my developed relationship with his family and home country. To be honest, it didn’t even occur to me that it would be extra difficult because no one here would acknowledge it.

Until this weekend, that is. It suddenly dawned on me on Saturday morning. Not only was I missing my husband terribly, but I was about to spend what should be a happy and romantic day with my in-laws (buzz kill) who most definitely would not volunteer a ‘Happy Anniversary’ (meanies) and would quite possibly respond with ‘this isn’t your anniversary’ if I mentioned it to them (downright evil). So I sulked for a few minutes, then got busy distracting myself for the entire weekend.

Hubby claims that he didn’t say anything to his family about this, and that they must have overheard me tell him ‘happy anniversary’ on the phone Sunday morning. To be fair, I was in the car with all of them when this occurred, but they were all talking over top of each other at that time so I know there was no way they heard anything I said. As the phone was then passed around so that everyone could tell hubby hello, a funny thing happened. As each person handed the phone over to the next person, they wished me a happy anniversary. Not even one person said it before speaking to hubby on the phone, but everyone said it immediately after. And yet he supposedly didn’t say anything.

Normally I would fuss at him not to lie and try to pull one over on me. But in this case…I’ll take it. Sure, nobody made a big deal about it still. But they had acknowledged it, which was far more than I was expecting, and with no inappropriate or snarky comments, which I had begun to think was an impossibility in any conversation.

Hubby had saved the day. The fact that he called just after midnight east coast time just made it even better. Yes, it still bites to be away from him on our anniversary. But we made it through, and I know that the many more years we have to celebrate together will be all the better because I came here.

And as for the 4^th of July…I’ve requested firecrackers, so we’ll see what happens.