Saying I Love You for the First Time

" A short autographical semi-fictionalized piece about meeting my future (and now present) husband in New York.

When I first told my family about Surnish, they didn’t believe me.

“Are you sure this isn’t just a fad?” My father questioned over the phone.  He was referring to Surnish’s Indian origin.

I rolled my eyes in response and sighed loudly, “No, do you think I date men now based on how exotic they are?”

“Well you’ve always had that interest in India.”

This was true, but completely beside the point.  Rather, I suspected my father thought my two years in New York had affected my sensibilities insomuch as the want for being fashionable would trump the pursuit of love when it came to choosing partners.  That simply wasn’t true.

Love had not been kind in the years leading to that point.  No more unkind to me than to others, I supposed, but it didn’t quell the sting of loneliness and disappointment.

“Just try posting.  You might meet some fun people.”

That was my friend’s advice.  Her friend had posted personal ads on Craigslist with some success and encouraged me to do the same.  I was advised to place two listings.  Both postings should be representative of different sides of my personality, but honest.  Anyone answering both should be deleted immediately (which did happen several times).  Then I could pick from guys who like the down-to-earth side of me or the sassy side.

What a mess.  Men falling far outside the scope of my list of ‘desired’ attributes accused me of being, among other things, age-ist.  How was that possible?  I clearly stated no one over thirty-five because they would then be closer in age to my father than to myself.  That thought I couldn’t abide.

Most replies were lengthy and self aggrandizing.  I was quickly bored of the process.  I met a couple of men, but felt cheated by the differences between the ‘advertised them’ and the ‘real them.’  One evening I opened a simple email stating that he was ‘living, working, existing in New York, and that a picture was worth a thousand words.’  I looked at the picture.  He seemed cute enough.

A month-long email and phone courtship ensued.  Not an easy one at first.  I was dismayed by the fact that he was an Aries to my Capricorn: a very contentious coupling.   When the stars finally aligned, after several missed attempts, we met for the first time in Grand Central Station at the beginning of Labor Day weekend.  The sentimentality of it would have been perfectly clichéd if not for the twenty-four hours I had spent stranded in Los Angeles the day before.  The delay did, nonetheless, heighten my anxious anticipation to a frenzied level.

As I made my way to the meeting spot we decided on, I repeated a silent wish over and again: Please let me be attracted to him in person.  Relations via the phone and internet can lend oneself to a false sense of ease and comfort, as I had previously discovered.  I hoped my senses hadn’t betrayed me again.

Upon ascending the stairs, I was greeted by an eagerly smiling man with dark, emotive eyes.  His black hair feathered across his tan forehead, reaching for the thin rims of glasses.  In his hands were a bunch of white and magenta orchids, neatly wrapped in clear cellophane and tied with a matching magenta ribbon.  I preferred carnations, but naturally he wouldn’t know that.  I was secretly grateful that he was sensible enough not to waste his money on roses.  I suspected he was trying to send me a message of thoughtfulness and frugality.

More important than the flowers was this thought: ‘Yes! I’m attracted.’

Our first weekend together led to an immediate affinity for each another.  It felt as if we had never spent a day of our lives apart before those first few days together.  Such an immediate understanding and affection for someone was completely foreign to me.  My instinctive reaction was to share this news with my family.

My father, as noted, reacted with skepticism.  I would have been surprised if it had been any other reaction.  I had a horrid track record with boyfriends.  However, his suggestion of my going through a ‘fad’ bordered on insulting.  I was never one to be prone to fads.  Well that is to say not since the years of colored mascara and Aquanet. 

I was a woman of twenty-five and fully believed I deserved the respect of being thought of as sensible in my decision making.  Fads were constrained by time and circumstances.  Love was not.  If I felt it, then it wouldn’t budge because the next month came around and a new flavor was offered.

“Well you know,” my mother began, “if you were to marry and have kids and then go to his home country you’d better watch out.  He could keep your kids there.”

 “Mom,” I sighed, “he’s from India not Iran.  This isn’t Not Without My Daughter.”

“Oh, I know,” her voice still thick with suspicious caution, “but you don’t know what their laws are like over there.  They favor the men.”

“Argh, he’s not even Muslim.  He’s Sikh.”

“What?”

That was the response most of my family members gave upon first hearing of Surnish’s family ancestry.  Some amateurish investigations led to such discoveries as www.sikh.net.

“They’re very egalitarian,” my father proclaimed.  “Very progressive.  They think of women as equals.”

“Does he wear a turban?” asked one of my sisters.

“No.”

“What was his name again?” asked another sister.

“Sur-neesh,” I repeated for the third time.

Silence lingered on the other end of the phone line and was finally broken with, “Do you have to call him sir too?”

“What? No!  He’s not a knight.  That’s his name.  Surnish.”

By this time, just five days after our first in-person meeting, I was a pro at saying his name.  However, the previous Friday, and over the weekend that followed it, I cringed at the thought of saying his name out loud for fear of butchering it.  Having an unusual name myself, I spent my life embittered by the countless attempts others made at saying my name with little to dismal success.

“My name is Jarucia.”

“Jerusala?”

“No, Ja-roo-sha.”

“Jar-cia?”

“No, Ja-roo-sha.”

“Ja-roo-sha.  Huh, sounds like a disease.  Like I got a bad case of Jarucia and I can’t go outside today.”

True, most of the times actually ended with ‘what a lovely name’ but those responses didn’t feed my name-despair.  I thought it would be the ultimate humiliation if I, in turn, garbled the name of this man that was so quickly endeared to my heart.  I managed the whole weekend without once saying his name aloud to him.  Privately, however, I practiced on my own.  I let me lips move slowly through the motions they would make.  Two simple syllables, but I found it embarrassingly difficult to be confident of my pronunciation.  What if I said ‘sur-nish’ with a short ‘i’ instead of the long ‘e’ sound?  In my mind it would be close to unforgivable.  By the time we bade farewell on Monday’s holiday, his name flowed out of my mouth with ease: Sur-neesh.

The week that followed felt like a mere blip in time.  Before I knew it, I stepped off the train at the 125^th street station and hailed a cab to take me the half dozen blocks to his apartment.  That he lived in Harlem only added fuel to my already over active romantic imagination: the authentic grit of it all.  The grit on the streets didn’t grip me as I thought it might.  The forlorn lovers, Maria and Tony, were nowhere to be seen.  As with every American neighborhood it was filled with ‘average’ Americans.  Mentally I shrugged as I stepped out of the street and into his apartment building.

That second weekend of our blossoming romance was as full and rich as the first.  Friday evening we met friends for dinner at Mamma Mexico on the upper west side.  I felt suddenly shy about being so affectionate with him in front of others, but his receptiveness let me know my actions were welcomed.  Saturday, an artist displayed his work at Washington Square Park as we strolled by and commented, holding one another’s hands.  Sunday we took repose at Union Square Park for hours after lunch.  Surnish laid his head in my lap and we spoke sweetly to one another and gazed without shame into each other’s eyes.  Later that evening, I boarded the Hudson line full of hope for the weeks and months that spread before us.  I looked forward to the unknown and unfolding development of our relationship.  The possibilities appeared to me endless.

Then Tuesday came.

September eleventh.

The world changed around us in the breath of a day.  All emotions and thoughts rampaged through my head.  In another time, with any other person, the thought of a new relationship would have been extinguished by the enormity of the shock I felt; but not with Surnish.  Our minds and hearts seemed already set upon one another. 

Days dragged by, immeasurably slow.  Calls crossed the continent and the oceans to friends and family.  My mind was torn by lack of understanding for the events that passed.  I wrote furiously in my journal over the matter.  And, in the midst of the dark haze that vexed my mind, there shone the point of light of my new love.  I cherished it, though I felt guilt in letting myself this simple pleasure at a time when I was surrounded by so much suffering.

            The following weekend, amongst the mourning, questioning and anger, we toured the places of remembrances: the stations of hope and grief.

            ‘Please Do Not Feed Hate’ read a vandalized park sign that no doubt would have won a sympathetic turn of the cheek had the culprit been caught red-handed.  Yards and yards of written words of loss and love—wax streaked, water streaked, tear streaked. 

            “I never met you and I’ll never forget you.”

            “I don’t know you but I miss you already.”

            And lines and lines of people, strangers, milling and crying and clinging to one another and to themselves when no one else was around.

            We returned to his apartment emotionally exhausted by the frailty and faults of the world around us.  We sat at his tiny kitchen table with cups of tea to soothe ourselves against the harshness of the reality beyond the apartment walls.

Suddenly it seemed silly that we should keep our feelings to ourselves.  To follow social decorum and wait an allotted amount of time before exposing the truth of our hearts and minds.

And that’s how I ended up saying “I love you” to Surnish for the first time.

 

Reviews

[Hedra Helix]

Sweet;) A simple review. I as a reader fully enjoyed it and was deeply sucked into the story.

[bluessadmood]

very nice writing ,i kept reading just to know the end and you ended it so nicely ,the sequele of events are so beautiful and capturing ,

[Steven Williams]

Terrific story! I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think it amazing when it comes to parents, especially, that they forget what it is like to fall in love and have everyone around them tell them they might be making a mistake, or looking for something so small to dislike the person their child is seeing. Maybe it is a protective instinct. Love is so strong, it has not a color, race, religion, or even a gender. If two souls connect, and you know the connection I mean, it's beyond that physical connection, then NO ONE, has a right to stand in the way of true love. Not even the worst tragedy to happen in this country since World War II. It was an atrocious event, and it may be in our nature to fear what we do not understand, but that does not give anyone the right destroy that which we do not understand. The plot, the theme, the conflict, everything grabbed me in this story. Excellent writing. You used metaphors effectively and you painted a vivid picture with your imagery. You also did a great job portraying the lengths men and women will go through, such as online rendezvous' to find that true special someone. Welcome to the cafe and by all means, please continue writing!!!
~Stephen

[Sean Allen]

Refreshing, and he probably knew that you liked Carnations, but Orchids are the greatest of the flowering plant species. Welcome to the Cafe!
sa