Getting My Foot In The Door

I still remember exactly when I felt like things might one day loosen up between M's parents and me; that we might one day be a family.

When they came to America for our wedding, they were very nice to me. They brought gifts and sat pleasantly in my parent's house for the first dinner meeting. They waived money around my head and fed me bites of dessert at our wedding ceremony. But things were still tense. 

After the wedding we spent a few days doing tourist-y things, and then we all flew to the state M was living. (he had graduated and begun working in a new state a few months prior, I was still finishing up school and living in the previous state.) His parents stayed with him - with us, I guess - for fifty-two days after we were married. That was our honeymoon. 

During that time M worked most days. Weekends were spent shuffling his parents around to see or do different things. It was his parents' first trip to America. (Well, actually his father had spent a few weeks here twice before, but he was alone and it was mainly occupation related.) We took them to the major theme parks, we took them to some national parks. We took them shopping. A lot of shopping. 

But most of the week it was just me and them at home. We cooked a lot. Ammi would cook and Abbu would translate and write down her recipes for me. We looked through old pictures. M was working on editing a video of our wedding, so we would all work on that - M editing, me picking out pictures, Ammi and Abbu picking out old Indian songs. 

But it was still weird and awkward and difficult. After all, I had never met these people until a few weeks before, and now I was spending 8 hours a day in a one-bedroom, 700 square foot apartment with them. And only 2 out of 3 of us spoke the same language at the same time. Abbu was a constant translator. Things were difficult, is what I'm getting at!

But, I still remember the first time the wave crested and I could see the possibility of us all living happily ever after as a real family on the other side. In our wedding preparation week, I had also taken the LSAT test. During all the final wedding details and honeymoon period, I had largely forgotten about it. One evening close to the end of M's parent's stay, M and I were in the bedroom working on the wedding video, and I decided to check my email. I saw an email from the LSAT people and I immediately knew what it was. I gasped, and cried out to M that my results were here. He called out to Ammi and Abbu and they rushed into the room just as I was scrolling down to get my results. They were pretty good. Everyone yelled some kind of "Hurray!" or "Yay! Everyone was excited. I was smart!  I was going to get into a good school!

And then Ammi patted my head. 

And I beamed and glowed and was so happy. Somehow that one little gesture meant that it was all going to work out just fine.