My parents’ visit to meet my wife’s parents should have been simple enough. It might have been, too, except for one small fact: They didn’t know that she is my wife. They thought that we were engaged to be married in June. In reality, we had been married for two months. Her family knew, our friends knew, but I had a nagging fear that my parents would not be pleased to hear the news.
Flashback to Dec 28, 2004. My then-fiance Noelle and I head down to the Cook County building in Chicago. We are visiting for Christmas break, and I tell my parents I want to show Noelle around the city. The day before, we were supposedly shopping, while in reality we got our marriage license. Today, after going to lunch at the Rainforest Caf?, we sit waiting at the Marriage Court. It feels strangely like a waiting room for anything else, like maybe a doctor or a dentist’s office.
It’s fairly full today, but they work quickly and we only wait for about 45 minutes. They call our names and we head into the judge’s office. All I really remember was how hot it was in the office. The judge told us we could take off our coats. The “ceremony” lasted about two minutes; we thanked the judge and were given a copy of our marriage certificate. On the way out I paid a homeless man five dollars to take some Polaroid pictures of us in the lobby of the County building. For the next few days, we would keep saying to each other, “Wow, we really got married, didn’t we?” But immediately afterwards, we went down the street to Corner Bakery and had lunch. I called a few friends to tell them the news, and then we headed back. We made sure to keep the marriage certificate out of view for the rest of our stay at my parents’ house.
Why did we get married so quickly? And why didn’t I tell my parents? For the first question, I believe that when you’ve found the right person, and you’re both on the same level about where you want to go, why not do it? I’ll admit I am a hopeless romantic, so when I found someone else who felt the same way about relationships, I did not want to let her go. She and her parents were more traditional than my family and did not like the idea of living together before marriage. And since we were planning the wedding for June, we decided to get married by a judge. Sure, we could have waited, but we are both young and impatient. We would still have the actual wedding ceremony this summer, but we wanted to take care of the important part. Plus, it seemed like an exciting thing to do, and would provide good stories for many years to come. Some reasons for doing it were clearly better than others.
The question of the secrecy is a bit trickier. My parents got married after dating for two months. You’d think they would understand such matters. They love Noelle and say she’s perfect for me. Maybe in a few years. Maybe after graduation, after finding a career, building some wealth and living together for a while-the traditional non-traditional courtship process. It seemed like a stretch to get them to accept that we would be getting married in June, rather than waiting for another year or more. Some of their fears were probably warranted, like the idea that getting married while still in school would make focusing on academics more difficult. But we were up to the challenge.
It probably was a bad decision on my part to keep this from my parents. We got married right under their noses, some 12 miles from my house. But I had built it up in my mind that telling them would surely be the end of me. Maybe physically, maybe not. They would disown me, cut off any financial support, and say “Well, you have your own family now, bye!” Most of my friends advised me to tell them, and that it would be too stressful to keep a secret that huge. They were right, but I was still very afraid when my parents said they were coming to Washington to visit.
When we picked them up at the airport, we took off our wedding bands. I sat in the car in the parking garage at the airport for a good 15 minutes just trying to collect myself. We avoided any conversation regarding the wedding. I immediately changed the subject when my mom would say something like, “Can’t you wait maybe a year or two?” I was a nervous wreck, but it seemed like I had things under control.
But, there was one situation we couldn’t control-our parents’ meeting. I thought it would be like “Meet the Fockers” only less humorous. Noelle’s parents said they would not offer any information, but would not lie if asked direct questions. My parents wanted to meet her parents without us present, so they could “voice their concerns.” So the plan was, Noelle and I would leave with some friends for the evening and the parents would go to dinner.
We ended up going to a concert in D.C. that night, and on the way home I got a call from my mother-in-law. She said that everything went fine and that no one was upset. She put my mom on the phone. “Congratulations!” I heard. I got woozy and dropped the phone. Noelle looked at me and asked, “What? What is it?” I tried to use hand gestures to explain that the secret was out, but to no avail. “Uh … They, uh … they know” I managed to get out. I picked up the phone and talked with my dad.
To my utter surprise and amazement, my parents were not upset. They were disappointed, of course, that I hadn’t told them, but they said they thought Noelle and I were perfect together and that they couldn’t be happier. I still insist they must have been drugged, but after an hour or so I came around to the reality that they now knew, and they were accepting.
A load was lifted from my shoulders, but things seemed a lot less exciting now that my life wasn’t so much like a movie script. Real life has now set in. I’m married and I still have one more year of college. But that’s OK. We’ll move to Arlington this summer, after our wedding ceremony, and next May I’ll graduate. In the meantime, I’ll have to live with the fact I commute farther to school than most of my professors, and that the “random play” box will remain forever unchecked on my Facebook profile.
