Kids, you know how in the movies, people meet in the bar, fall in love, and break it off? Well, I did met my husband at a bar.
*Shock*
And guess what, he wasn’t Indian. Or Hindu. Or Jain. Or Indian. Or even American.
He was Swedish, fresh off the boat from Sweden.
This is when you realize, real love doesn’t happen in castles and with dozens of roses, it happens in reality in its own special way.
We were both at a bar in San Francisco for a meetup through the Scandinavian Club (I don’t know how, but I was accepted into the club several months earlier – being neither Swedish nor Scandinavian). And we were introduced to each other by a crazy Norwegian, who had no sense of sensibility.
At first his friends and I awkwardly stood around asking where everyone is from and what they do. In that, I heard the Swede say he lived in a small town I grew up in many years back in North Carolina. Turns out, he spent a summer there and lived just a few miles away from me.
That kids, is the icebreaker. The rest is really all history.
There were no butterflies in the stomach, there was tornado. Because at that moment I knew this was someone I didn’t want to let go of. He knew it too.
We got married in 2010 and in 2011 with an Indian wedding and lived happily ever after.
The end.
Okay, okay, just kidding. We had some great months together before departing for Sweden (I had to start work before he was able to return). The months apart were difficult and full of, ‘should-we’, ‘shouldn’t-we’, ‘should-we?’
But then when he arrived back to Sweden, it was we should!
… NOT get married.
Not yet at least. Hahaha.
We should move in together! And so we did.
Folks, people say moving in is this huge, important committment and you should not do it ‘just because’ and you should not be living together before marriage, etc etc. Reality is, we don’t live in 1926 anymore. And the reality is that we live in Sweden, where living together before marriage (and never with marriage) is the status quo.
There’s a lot I can say about moving in together, especially when you’re of different cultures, races, ethnicities, etc. So I’m leaving that to my post on moving in together.
We moved in together after just six months. It was a short time, and frankly a little ridiculous. But it was the right decision.
And here’s where all that ooey-goey romantic stuff comes in. When you know, you know. You don’t need six months or two years to decide to be together, you know you’ll be together.
We both knew we wanted to be together and we both were pretty certain we were going to get married. When, who knows. For now, we live together with our fuzzball rabbit.
My dad knew we were living together but my mother did not. So for another six months we failed to tell her about so-called roommate/boyfriend. And when we did, her only response was if we’ll get married.
The answer was of course, “I don’t know.” She was grumpy to that but then before she knew it, the Sweden came to India with me and charmed everybody with his good manners, brains, and love of Indian food.
But the day Mom really fell in love with the boyfriend was when we were looking through her jewelry and he was so happy to have us try on the pieces. He sat with a cup of chai and happily commented on all the pieces I tried on. Then he and Mom chatted and we tried on more jewelry. To this day, it’s one of the happiest moments of my life.
There are lots more stories to share about our lives together in these four years since we met. Really though, everyday I wake up, I’m so happy to have stolen all the blankets and him call me a thief and steal them back.