Tess jumped up and went to her dad mumbling something under her breath. I stood up and looked at my father who had the proud look in his eyes because he knew “he got me”. I walked over to my mom and said “what the heck are you guys doing?”
“It was your father’s idea” she said smiling looking at Tess. “And you must be Tess,” my mom said walking over to give her a hug. Meanwhile Tess’ father circled round behind my father and stuck out his hand to me. “Good to see you again. “I told your father when he came into the store that we better do something or we’d never meet “officially”’, doing the quotes sign in the air. This is my wife, Tess’ mother Vanessa.
“Hello” I said as I grasped her hand. It was very apparent seeing both of her parents that Tess got her looks from her mother but her eyes and stature from her father. Her mother was beautiful, in the classic sense. If she was wearing make-up I could not tell. She had a beautifully proportional oval head with a sleek nose and perfect lips. Lips were one of the first things I noticed about Tess; in fact I would go into a daze watching her mouth as she would speak.
I turned around to look and Tess was standing with my parents, my mother was holding her hand. I caught my dad wink at me and shook my head. Tess began introducing Harry, Loretta, and Roscoe to our parents. She then stepped back as the greeted one another and came over to me and grabbed my hand. “My father” she started to say and I interrupted, “Our fathers”.
“So son am I gonna get some treats or do I have to”.
“Yes dad” I interrupted and quickly went to the candy bag. I rooted around in there looking for one of my dad’s favorites – dark chocolate Milky Way bars. I gave him a few and he said “first they need to be frozen” as he looked over at Tess’ father.
Our mothers came over and shared “we have made dinner plans for next week and the week after” my mom said nodding at Tess’ mother. “Yes next week the six of us will have dinner at our home,” Tess mom said, “and the following week at our home” my mom finished her sentence. Tess and I looked at each other and at that moment I wanted to stop time and everything in it but Tess and I and allow us to step away and discuss what each of us was thinking. I had a pretty good idea what she was thinking but once the moment passed so would have the true words of emotions. I suspect words like “nice, afraid, fear, eventually had to happen, could be worse, and the unspoken word “sigh””. After the fact, when everyone was gone and we talked it was she was okay, jittery, but okay. BUT I saw her eyes when our moms announced the dinner plans are those big wide eyeballs were proclaiming a lot of things but “okay” wasn’t one of them. Well second thought, it could have been “okay” like when someone is saying something they shouldn’t and you try to shut them down and change the subject. That startled “OKAY” so maybe she just needed to communicate to me what kind of okay it really was. But I digress….
I believe our fathers would have stayed the rest of the evening with us just so they could torture us but the moms said it was time to go and get some dessert which surely had to be some type of bribe to get them all to leave. Tess and I said goodbye to our parents and as they walked away Harry grabbed the back of my pant leg and gave it a yank. “Boy they got yas!” Tess and I turned around to see Loretta and Harry armed with big dirty grins and we laughed – nervously – but still we laughed.
Hope, Levity and Wonder 