Two Halves Make a "Yes!": Officially Engaged.

When there’s 10,000 miles between you and your beloved’s parents, a few questions arise about how consent is gong to happen. Like, “Does present-day technology (webcams and GoogleTalk) suffice in replacing the traditional meet-the-parents-dinner?” “Would his parents ever give consent without having so much as met me?”
These questions settled into the smorgasbord of thoughts, ideas, hopes, fears and questions skirmishing between my frontal and temporal lobes, including the classic, “Will they like me?”

Alex and I decided to tell both our parents that we were thinking about asking for consent as soon as we realized that we would need to know what they would require and appreciate from us. Dinner in Portland ensued (farm animals included) a couple of weeks after I gave my parents the heads-up. When Alex went to tell his parents about our pending hopes, they beat him to the punch.

“We’d like to meet her,” they said, over an internet connection spanning two and a half continents. Their fuzzy, pixilated images were smiling.

We planned on a trip to Boston, a place relatively halfway (not really) between our NW corner of the States and Haifa, Israel, where the World Center of the Bahá’í Faith is, and where Alex’s parents are volunteers. Alex’s incredibly hospitable aunt and uncle, Kay and Gary, had also volunteered their lovely Boston home to us for the weekend. There was an entire month between making solid plans and the actual trip – I was beside myself with excitement whenever I could afford to admit it (it’s a little hard to get anything at work done when you’re dancing around in anticipation). Throughout those four weeks, I would occasionally find myself frozen mid-step with the realization hitting me at full force, “We’re asking for consent.”

By the time we arrived in Boston on an early Friday morning in August (6:30 am-early), we had no energy left for…well, anything, let alone dancing around. Tricia and Eric, the parents who had, until that time, appeared to me as two people confined to a small box on the computer screen, hugged us warmly and excitedly. Alex and I responding with beaming smiles and sincere grunts. Everything felt very real.

After a warm breakfast, and a solid three hour nap, we awoke with eyes no less red than the flight we had taken into town, but very, very happy. A wind-blown walk around a beautiful forested park refreshed us and got the questions going. Behind my tired smile I had definitely been anticipating the get-to-know-you part of our cheerful banter. We only had three days, after all, to prove to Alex’s parents that we were not crazy for finding ourselves ready to marry after only two months! In no less cheerful tones, Eric and Tricia asked us things like how I was going to finish my degree through Oregon State University from Seattle, what my parents thought about the fact that they had known each other 25 years ago from the Bahá’í community in Salem (Oregon), what I would do if our child refused to eat his or her green beans, and what had been the first things we were each attracted to in the other.

A huge storm came in that night after dinner, and, while Tricia and Eric excused themselves to go tend to their insane levels of jetlag, Alex and I stayed outside by the koi pond talking things over, soaking up the fresh air and rain like good north-westerners. Only fifteen minutes later, the backdoor opened again. Tricia and Eric walked out, looking like they had only one thing on their minds.

“We were just getting ready for bed, and talking,” they began, “when we realized that we should probably come tell you that –“

I’m not sure how Alex’s breathing was doing at that moment, but mine was as good as gone. I mean, completely cut off.

“—we approve.”