Note: I will get back to the wedding posts. Things started getting quite chaotic immediately after I announced I'd finally get to that, and I've hardly had time to check email much less write a blog. And today I have something way more personal and important to write about so you'll just have to wait a little while longer on the wedding posts.
Do you ever look back at moments in your life, things that seemed insignificant at the time, and realize they really had a huge impact?
I've been doing a lot of that lately.
For instance, I never thought that a summer job at a park would lead to the adorable cat I've spoiled for 10 years this summer. Or that moving into one particular dorm in college (one primarily chosen for having A/C) would lead me to my husband, who came to the U.S. and to that dorm 10 years ago this summer. (Yeah it was a big summer.)
I also never thought that one person I met in high school 15 years ago would have perhaps the biggest influence on the path my life has taken.
She was one of my best friends in high school. The kind you just can't let out of your life after graduation.
She'd always been a traveler, growing up in Hawaii, moving to NC in middle school, traveling to Europe and moving to California after graduation. I'd never traveled farther away than Disney World, and had never been on an airplane.
After she'd lived in California for a year and I'd completed my first year of college, she decided to move back to NC and wanted to bring her car. Since driving any long distance is zero fun by yourself, we concocted a plan for me to fly to California and drive back across the country with her, sightseeing along the way. That trip would prove to be a pivotal point in my life (10 years ago strangely enough...I told you it was a big summer).
I was bit by the travel bug. I realized there was SO MUCH beyond the borders of my life. And I wanted to discover it all.
I moved into that dorm where my husband lived, a dorm filled with students studying abroad at my university.
I made fast and lifelong friends in that dorm. Friends so close they traveled across the world to be at my wedding two years ago. One friend so close she comes to visit me in the U.S. every few years (I'm now poor and haven't been able to convince my moneymaking husband to take a trip to England...yet.) A friend so close I traveled around England and Scotland with her six months after she left the U.S.
My first international flight. A flight that was so craptastic it was delayed by 12 hours and I spent the night on an airport lobby floor. And yet it didn't stop me from taking a ton more international flights, including to England to visit that friend another six months later en route to my summer studying abroad in Madrid.
I went on to travel to (and consider a life in) New York, San Francisco, Boston, Austin, Aruba, Hawaii, India (three times, once for two months), Turkey and Sri Lanka.
I moved away to Washington DC, a city I now love with all of my heart and that feels like home.
Without that friend I met 15 years ago, I probably never would have done any of these things. She introduced me to the world outside. She inspired and encouraged me. Heck, without her I probably still wouldn't be eating vegetables! She broadened my life in so many ways.
This weekend, she's picking up and moving back to Hawaii. In just a few weeks she has sorted through all the things from her life and decided what is important enough to keep and what is just extraneous. She is leaving behind the life she's built for herself and starting over.
She continues to inspire me.
If I ever find the strength to do something like that (which is in my plans...for "someday"), it will be because of her influence in my life.
She has helped make me who I am. And for that I am forever grateful.
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Friday, May 4, 2012
Why I never talk about the wedding
I know I've referenced my Indian wedding, but have never actually written about it. Which may be (probably not) frustrating for those readers I didn't inundate with details and photos immediately after the fact.
The truth is, it's not a happy story for me. It was insanity, I wasn't ready for it, I just wanted it over with. There was no reveling in the cultural experience. I merely tried to keep breathing until it was over. So, other than some initial venting when I first got home, I never talk about it. When I shared the obligatory Facebook photos of my trip to India, I didn't post a single one from my wedding. I didn't want questions, I didn't even want everyone to know about it. I just wanted to forget about it.
But I realize now that it's an integral part of who I am, my relationship with my husband and my relationship with his family. And as such, it shouldn't just be hidden in a box and shoved under the bed. And beyond my stress and complete freakout, there really are some fascinating stories.
So I want to share that part.
But first, you have to endure the bad. And the setup.
Hubby and I moved in together in the summer of 2009. Hubby's parents flipped out to levels I did not even begin to realize at the time (perhaps because no one bothered to tell me...). Their son was living with a girl. A girl they'd never met. A girl who was not Indian.
And marriage in the U.S. is apparently just not legal. Or some other faulty logic like that. Whatever. I'm over it. Except when they tell me happy anniversary in October. Then I'm under it again. Not a legal wedding people! NOT a legal wedding!
But as I was saying. I'm over it.
We were traveling to India for a friend's wedding in October anyway, so my in-laws decided to just throw in an extra one. And my husband, being the oldest child and feeling indebted to his parents for that whole putting-him-through-school-and-paying-to-send-him-to-the-U.S. thing, wanted to do this for them. And so I wanted to do it for him. (He also wanted to do it for his brother, in hopes that it would satisfy their parents and they wouldn't put him through the ringer when he gets married. And for this reason, if they try to make him have a wedding he doesn't want, or he decides that after all that he actually wants an Indian wedding, I WILL cut someone.)
I agreed to the wedding despite the fact that I didn't want it. Despite the fact that my dad had died just a few months earlier. Despite the fact that I had been very clear since that time that there could be no big wedding until I had dealt with it, until I was ready. And despite the fact that both my husband and his parents pretended to understand that, then one month later sprung (sprang?) the Indian wedding plan on me. Despite all that, my desire to make my husband happy (a happiness based on making his parents happy) won out. I agreed to the wedding.
The trip was doomed from the start. We'd already purchased our plane tickets when this plan came about (less than two months before we were set to depart), and we had to change our flights to add an extra week to our stay.
Changing flights is not cheap. It cost us the price of a third ticket to change our dates.
Then, due to a series of disasters including not properly researching how to get to this magical place where we could park our car for three weeks for free, we ended up parking at the airport (which would have cost us nearly $200) and then being late for our flight anyway. Getting dropped at the curb, I would have made it in with our luggage just under the wire. But once they realized there was another person coming, they couldn't wait that long and closed the flight. No amount of stressful tears or begging would change their minds. Something about delaying the flight being unfair to the hundreds of other people already on board. Nonsense.
We were switched to the next night's flight and told there was no fee. When we returned the next night (after finding the free spot to park the car and arriving an hour earlier than necessary), we learned that there was, in fact, a fee for missing your flight and being put on a later one. A hefty fee. In fact, the cost of yet another ticket.
For the amount we paid in fees, we could have paid for two other people to travel to India.
This would have made the trip infinitely better in that a) I could have saved my mom a lot of money, or b) I could have had two more people I'd actually met before (making it a grand total of...five) at this fiasco.
This also would have made my in-laws slightly less annoying, as they kept expressing extreme disappointment that all of my family and friends couldn't come...and not like an "aw that's too bad" kind of disappointment but a "your family is horrible people and we're stuck with them thanks to the voodoo you worked on our son" kind of disappointment.
I could not make them understand that the trip is crazy expensive and I don't know a single person who has that kind of money. Not to mention they all have jobs with a limited amount of paid vacation days, which would make it even more difficult.
It's not that people didn't WANT to be there. It's that no one has that kind of money. That's not like refraining from buying takeout one night so you can go get a haircut later. That's more like not buying anything, even groceries, ever for the next decade so you can go watch your friend be miserable for a few days.
I felt horrible even asking my mother and sisters to do it! Though if they had not been there, I very surely would have died. That is sadly not an exaggeration. It is a very real possibility that my body would have just given out under all the pressure. There were more than a few moments when I actually would have preferred that than to endure one more minute of what felt, and to be honest still feels even in memory, like torture. But my family was there and they held my hand while I screamed and they calmed me when I cried and I have rarely felt so miserable as when I put them back on that plane knowing I had another two weeks to go.
Whoa that got a little morbid there. I know, you want all happy-go-lucky stories about the extravagant events. Unfortunately, that wasn't what it was for me. Probably if it had happened later, when I was ready, I would have enjoyed it. Loved it, even. But going down the way it did, it is actually a painful memory for me and a barrier between me and my in-laws.
So there you have the background. The way it came about and why you never hear about it. So now I'm ready to tell you all about the whirlwind of activity between arriving in India for the first time and finally being allowed to sleep when the festivities were done more than a week later. And pictures, there will be pictures.
The truth is, it's not a happy story for me. It was insanity, I wasn't ready for it, I just wanted it over with. There was no reveling in the cultural experience. I merely tried to keep breathing until it was over. So, other than some initial venting when I first got home, I never talk about it. When I shared the obligatory Facebook photos of my trip to India, I didn't post a single one from my wedding. I didn't want questions, I didn't even want everyone to know about it. I just wanted to forget about it.
But I realize now that it's an integral part of who I am, my relationship with my husband and my relationship with his family. And as such, it shouldn't just be hidden in a box and shoved under the bed. And beyond my stress and complete freakout, there really are some fascinating stories.
So I want to share that part.
But first, you have to endure the bad. And the setup.
Hubby and I moved in together in the summer of 2009. Hubby's parents flipped out to levels I did not even begin to realize at the time (perhaps because no one bothered to tell me...). Their son was living with a girl. A girl they'd never met. A girl who was not Indian.
And marriage in the U.S. is apparently just not legal. Or some other faulty logic like that. Whatever. I'm over it. Except when they tell me happy anniversary in October. Then I'm under it again. Not a legal wedding people! NOT a legal wedding!
But as I was saying. I'm over it.
We were traveling to India for a friend's wedding in October anyway, so my in-laws decided to just throw in an extra one. And my husband, being the oldest child and feeling indebted to his parents for that whole putting-him-through-school-and-paying-to-send-him-to-the-U.S. thing, wanted to do this for them. And so I wanted to do it for him. (He also wanted to do it for his brother, in hopes that it would satisfy their parents and they wouldn't put him through the ringer when he gets married. And for this reason, if they try to make him have a wedding he doesn't want, or he decides that after all that he actually wants an Indian wedding, I WILL cut someone.)
I agreed to the wedding despite the fact that I didn't want it. Despite the fact that my dad had died just a few months earlier. Despite the fact that I had been very clear since that time that there could be no big wedding until I had dealt with it, until I was ready. And despite the fact that both my husband and his parents pretended to understand that, then one month later sprung (sprang?) the Indian wedding plan on me. Despite all that, my desire to make my husband happy (a happiness based on making his parents happy) won out. I agreed to the wedding.
The trip was doomed from the start. We'd already purchased our plane tickets when this plan came about (less than two months before we were set to depart), and we had to change our flights to add an extra week to our stay.
Changing flights is not cheap. It cost us the price of a third ticket to change our dates.
Then, due to a series of disasters including not properly researching how to get to this magical place where we could park our car for three weeks for free, we ended up parking at the airport (which would have cost us nearly $200) and then being late for our flight anyway. Getting dropped at the curb, I would have made it in with our luggage just under the wire. But once they realized there was another person coming, they couldn't wait that long and closed the flight. No amount of stressful tears or begging would change their minds. Something about delaying the flight being unfair to the hundreds of other people already on board. Nonsense.
We were switched to the next night's flight and told there was no fee. When we returned the next night (after finding the free spot to park the car and arriving an hour earlier than necessary), we learned that there was, in fact, a fee for missing your flight and being put on a later one. A hefty fee. In fact, the cost of yet another ticket.
For the amount we paid in fees, we could have paid for two other people to travel to India.
This would have made the trip infinitely better in that a) I could have saved my mom a lot of money, or b) I could have had two more people I'd actually met before (making it a grand total of...five) at this fiasco.
This also would have made my in-laws slightly less annoying, as they kept expressing extreme disappointment that all of my family and friends couldn't come...and not like an "aw that's too bad" kind of disappointment but a "your family is horrible people and we're stuck with them thanks to the voodoo you worked on our son" kind of disappointment.
I could not make them understand that the trip is crazy expensive and I don't know a single person who has that kind of money. Not to mention they all have jobs with a limited amount of paid vacation days, which would make it even more difficult.
It's not that people didn't WANT to be there. It's that no one has that kind of money. That's not like refraining from buying takeout one night so you can go get a haircut later. That's more like not buying anything, even groceries, ever for the next decade so you can go watch your friend be miserable for a few days.
I felt horrible even asking my mother and sisters to do it! Though if they had not been there, I very surely would have died. That is sadly not an exaggeration. It is a very real possibility that my body would have just given out under all the pressure. There were more than a few moments when I actually would have preferred that than to endure one more minute of what felt, and to be honest still feels even in memory, like torture. But my family was there and they held my hand while I screamed and they calmed me when I cried and I have rarely felt so miserable as when I put them back on that plane knowing I had another two weeks to go.
Whoa that got a little morbid there. I know, you want all happy-go-lucky stories about the extravagant events. Unfortunately, that wasn't what it was for me. Probably if it had happened later, when I was ready, I would have enjoyed it. Loved it, even. But going down the way it did, it is actually a painful memory for me and a barrier between me and my in-laws.
So there you have the background. The way it came about and why you never hear about it. So now I'm ready to tell you all about the whirlwind of activity between arriving in India for the first time and finally being allowed to sleep when the festivities were done more than a week later. And pictures, there will be pictures.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
I always thought I was a logical person...clearly I am not
I usually avoid using photos of actual people on my blog because of that whole privacy issue of having a public blog read by random people in places like South Korea (Hi, would that one reader please introduce yourself? Yes, you. You fascinate me. Also, the reader from Luxembourg. I don't even know where that is. I so badly want to know you!).
Same reason I don't use names. I mean, if someone put their mind to it, I'm sure they could piece together who I am, but names and photos just seems like asking for trouble. This is where I live! Here's my family's names along with what each person looks like! This is the password my mother taught me when I'd refuse to join her in the grocery store so that I'd know if she were really in there having a heart attack or someone were just trying to kidnap me from the car!
I also like to pretend the absence of names and photos gives me some sort of plausible deniability should my in-laws ever find my blog. I mean, I'm sure there's some other American named Caroline from DC married to an Indian from Pune who spent the months of June and July there last year living with her in-laws and working at the very same non-profits I worked at and visited the very same places I visited at the exact same time. It is a small world after all.
Wow, I knew my reasons behind the photo/name thing were probably pretty ridiculous but now that it's written out...if you want to stop being friends with me, now is probably a perfectly logical time.
Anyway, all this to say that I have decided to do away with this whole photo nonsense. Well, maybe I still won't show photos of my unsuspecting friends, but I think I at least am fair game. This is particularly important for my next post (or series of posts, I haven't decided yet).
I plan to tackle the topic of the literal big top circus that was my Indian wedding. And words just cannot do it justice.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)