Friday December 2: 8 Years Ago Today

Already married 2 yrs we have a wedding

Memory is a funny thing.   When I think back about the days that ended up changing the course of my life, I get incredibly anxious.  Even though at the time, when events were happening I felt fine....

Which is a slightly odd way of introducing this story.

Eight years ago today, I agreed to meet R for a quick coffee at the Tate Modern.  At this point, we'd met seven times in person (two of these were random run ins at parties).  I was in town for my mother's 50th, and so far, in the manner of every Richard Curtis holiday rom com ever made,  we had only crossed signals, backstories involving friends who were exes's, exe's who were friends and so on.

The grudging coffee became champagne (pink! vintage!) at his house (day time drinks figure largely in pivotal moments in my life, coincidence? or cause? something to figure out later).

The first bottle turned into the second and somewhere along the line we decided instead of dating, we would get engaged.  So out we went out to quickly get a ring before stores closed (which led R's banker to call him and ask what was happening because the transaction was deemed "out of the ordinary").  The next step?  Telling my parents. They had never heard of Rana before, thought I was dating someone else (details) and so were predictably stunned (understatement).

Memory is also funny because in the re-telling of our stories, details and narratives naturally shift, and then change how we perceived the events.

In my case, our personal story became one of the hooks used to promote my last book.

I didn't always like or agree with the hows and angles, but I went with it - since if you publish a relationship book at 32 with no real relationship credentials, your own story becomes fair game.

The first question was always: since I had written about arranged marriages, had I had one?

So, as advised by my publicist, I would diligently launch into explaining that no, although we got engaged after seven meetings, our parents were in no way involved and in fact, our families didn't meet for months after.

The getting engaged after seven dates is a media grabber particularly since many of journalists I was speaking with were single women who loved the idea that in a day, your whole life could completely change like this.

And although the decision sounds astonishingly impulsive, lost in the "public" story is that we had been exchanging emails for months.

London Engagement Party 

These weren't explicably "romantic" but they did set up the scene....

For instance,  after a night out, I once sent R several revisions of the same email (each one slightly edited to improve the casual but i hoped flirty tone and voice).

Also lost in my public telling of the story, was that although we didn't "date" we did meet for one weekend in Ottawa for the 80th birthday party of John Meisel, a wonderful man - (but still an odd first date, no?) R's idea, not mine.

 Three months later I moved to London. Four months later we got legally married.

In the months that followed, I would often experience the onset of a horrible delayed anxiety: I could have missed this, that it all could have so easily gone some other way, with someone else, in some other place.

My brother would say that our lives have all been written, I'm not sure about that... but, today, I'm glad it worked the way it did and deep thoughts aside, I'm just looking forward to a spa day tomorrow, with some chilled champagne and courtesy of my wonderful sister-in-law - a child free night.../rs

Saturday November 12: Flashback to the Babymoon

On Thursday night my closest cousin (closest in everything from age, life experience and geography) came over for dinner and to tell me that she is 4 months pregnant.  Which I kind of suspected as soon as I opened the door, since she was wearing oddly demure looking clothes with a wrap. Which is not her. Or me to be honest.  

Anyway, so we talked pregnancy over wine (me) and water (her).  I told her how I hated the feeling of being pregnant (because I did and I think more women need to be ok sharing that).  Not only did I not feel like me, struggle with identity issues (i found it stressful that pregnancy shifts how everyone from your mother to your husband relates to you) - I also hated the feeling that I was never ever alone. It was creepy that this baby was always with me. 

Coincidentally, right after she left, I noticed an email with the cryptic message, " Do you remember?" It was a close friend from London. She's now pregnant with her third and six years ago we'd both been pregnant with our first.  The month before we were both due, we'd all spent the Easter weekend together with our husbands in Paris.  It was our,  "Babymoon".  

According to USA today, 60% of parents now take the annoyingly named "babymoon" (which is really just a vacation before the baby comes, but of course everything to do with modern parenting now requires the clever marketing  moniker).  

Anyway, six years ago, it was Paris, at Easter and we stayed here (not quite as luxurious as trashy romance books or the little movie on their site had led me to believe);  we ate our way through several Michelin star meals (involving foamed bits) and we walked and talked.  I hadn't seen the pictures in since then, and my first thought was: my pink coat looks terrible (I find that pictures often reveal the truth to me that outfits or items that I thought looked ok or maybe even great, really just didn't).  

Right after, I dropped my cousin a note to see if she was going to do the Babymoon thing her response: "How is it a vacation if M (her husband) is relaxing and drinking while I'm stuck just watching him? So no." 

Like I said there's a reason she's my closest cousin.  /x.r

Thursday October 20: Old Friends

In the past 10 days, I've had two old friends visit.  One from my summer job at my old law firm and the second, from the high school years I spent in Madison, New Jersey.  One just got married, the other has a baby Avery's age.

Bear, now almost 30 years old. So really an old friend.

For me, the best kind of old friends are the ones where only a small part of the conversation is about the remember whens and most of it is about today and tomorrows, and both of these were like that.