An Important Announcement

I’m not sure of the best way to tell all of you, so I think I’ll tell the story of how I told B’s parents.

It was lunch time, and the four of us (B, parents, boyfriend) were sitting down to a casual lunch. It was standard fare – both the Singaporean noodles and the chit chat about weekend plans to rest up before taking naps. But I was speaking more from memory than the present, because most of my mind was frantically rehearsing a new script.

I searched in vain for the perfect time, but it was elusive. So finally, just as everyone was getting ready to move the dishes to the kitchen, I decided I had to settle for this final lull.

I cleared my throat and took B’s hand, while my eyes moved from her neck, to my thigh, to my plate.

“Mr. and Mrs. Liu, we have something important we’d like to tell you.”

Mr. Liu couldn’t (made no attempt to?) suppress a guttural and startled “What?!” Mrs. Liu gasped and leaned in from her seat to my left, leaving her face less than a foot from mine. In light of their obvious shock, bordering on horror, I was tempted to reverse course. But at this point a simple “Nevermind” would have not been enough to excuse myself from the table. So I pressed on.

“Well, uh, I know we’ve mentioned this to you before” – because we had – “and so you know that we’ve been considering this for a while.” Mrs. Liu’s breath has quicker on my cheeks.

“And so we’ve been thinking and praying about it, and, uh, we think the timing is right,” I continued. The words lurched from my throat, afraid of the piercing stares they’d meet in the soft glow of the early afternoon.

“We know that it’ll take a lot of work, and a lot of preparation, but we think we’re ready to make that kind of commitment.” I kept searching for more ideas to lengthen my halting preface – perhaps a contrast of the development of marriage in Asian vs. non-Asian countries, from antiquity through the next millennium? – but nothing could keep the inevitable at bay.

I adjusted my grip on B’s hand and looked to her for some sort of encouragement. She looked blank, as in colorless. “So I’ve asked Bea, and she’s accepted.”

By this point the announcement would not sit still any longer, and it just barely squeaked (literally) past every repressive thought that was welling from within. “We’re running the Standard Chartered half marathon.”

It took a moment for everyone to make sense of my faltering voice. And then they breathed. The back legs of her parents’ chairs thumped as they returned to the floor, and they slumped back, eyes half-closed, reveling in the sensation of rescuing mercy.

“So when is the marathon?” B’s mom asked as she straightened up – back to business. We discussed the details of the race and our training regimen. Her dad explained that he could not run such a long distance because of his knees. And then we resumed our afternoon schedule as planned.

Not such big news after all.