We were at a bridal shower, shooting pointed questions at our friend the bride.
“What was your expression when he proposed? When you first heard he was gonna ask?”
She blushed, laughed and shook her head. And we thought, oh, how bashful. But we weren’t about to let bashfulness get in the way of a good story.
“I can’t!” she protested.
“You must!” we insisted.
She shrugged her shoulders with resignation.
“I can’t tell you because — I proposed to him.”
Cake forks settled on paper plates and all eyes converged on the bride.
Not every wedding story is as memorable as that. At most engagements, the stuff of novels is summarized in no more than five words: Our families knew each other. We grew up together. Our friends hooked us up.
Still, I’d never heard the rime from an ancient mariner. (Actually, I don’t think I’d ever met an ancient mariner.) Two nights ago, however, A’s uncle, a sailor who traveled the seven seas, volunteered the story of his betrothal. His promised to be an interesting one for, in it, three siblings married three siblings.
Though the story involved a seven-year long engagement period and slight miscommunication between suitor and prospective father-in-law, and though it was told with the jocular good-humor of a seaman, the story itself was unremarkable. They proposed. They accepted. The rest was history.
“It was naseeb (destiny), and my naseeb was hiloo (sweet),” he said as he admired his wife with young eyes.
His daughter — a wife and mother herself — moved among us with a tray of Turkish coffee. Someone asked for more sugar.
“Did she say she wants more sugar?” ‘Ammu asked his wife. And though she had her hand cupped over her mouth, her eyes smiled through their thin-frame glasses as if she knew what was coming.
“Well,” he turned to the sweet-tooth, “have my wife dip her finger in it and you won’t be needing any sugar.”
All this got me to thinking that, yes, the initial stitches may have been unremarkable, but the elaborate work done since is beyond remarkable. These were two knitting needles that produced some of the finest work I’ve seen in Jordan. And though the years may have aged everything else around them, they seem to be strong, straight and shiny as ever.
The work this pair weaved between them over the course of these years — these children and grandchildren, this home — these I hope will always warm them because, for what it’s worth, on a cold night in February, they certainly warmed me.
aww! so sweet