Frankly Told: By Your Side
A chilly breeze ran through the living room as the front door shut with a click. His nerves applied pressure to his windpipe and he could hardly maintain enough breath control to hide it. It was then or never.
“Uh, excuse me, sir,” he started with a slight voice crack.
“Yes, my son?” the older man responded.
He cleared his throat in a bid to lull the impact of the nervousness he had battled since he had walked into the house that day. In doing so he only fanned the flame as it brought the attention of the old man on him, the focus in the eyes trained on him over the frames of glasses tensed him up. He could feel the sweat dampening the area on the knees of his pants where his palms sat.
“I’ve been meaning to speak to you and given that the ladies have stepped out I have decided to seize this opportunity.” He could only look at the glass in front of him as he spoke.
“Oh?” the older man locked his phone, placed it to the side before taking off his reading glasses that sat perched low on the bridge of his nose.
There was a silence, only mildly disrupted by the barking of dogs in the neighbourhood. His mouth had run dry and he knew if he reached for the glass on the table in front of him, there was a chance he would drop it. Thus he sat there, a ball of nerves with sand in his mouth.
“Go on then,” the older man pushed on, leaned back in the seat folding his glasses and placing them on the armrest of his high back leather chair.
“Sorry, sorry,” he began once again. “I don’t know why this makes me so nervous to speak to you about but here goes nothing.”
He looked up into the eyes of the older man and readjusted himself to face him, sitting upright.
“Thing is, sir,” he held a solidness in his voice of faux confidence. “It has been something I have thought about for a long time and I think it is time. I would like to, with all due respect, ask for your blessing to take your daughter’s hand in marriage.”
The older man said nothing but maintained eye contact as if to say “go on” and so he did.
“I have for the past week now, tried to think of some reason to have her leave the house so I could speak to you in private but I kept missing you,” he explained.
The older man scoffed and a silence fell over the two once again. He wondered if he had said something off colour or if he had messed up but he tried to keep his cool. All the pep talks he gave himself in the mirror, telling himself he would be fine regardless of the response, seemed to be extinguished in that one moment.
“I’m sorry,” the old man said. “Judging by your face, I might have scared you a little. My son, ease up a little. Relax your shoulders.”
He unclenched his jaw and his shoulders slowly sunk.
“I knew this day was coming,” the old man tiptoed lightly in his words. “I honestly thought it would be sooner and I was waiting.”
“However, my son,” the old man continued in a curious tone. “Traditions are there to be followed with these things. There are things in our culture we cannot afford to lose. They say lose your culture, lose your home, no?”
“I know, sir…” He responded with a slight relief in his voice.
“I must respect that in this sense, you and I may not be so different,” the old man smiled approvingly.
“Twenty-five years ago, I walked into my father-in-law’s house, much like you have just done,” the old man shook his head, reminiscing. “I was very adamant that I had to grab the bull by the horns and walk up to him, puff my chest and say, “Baba, I would like to marry your daughter.” I got to the door and poof all that self-righteousness disappeared.”
He couldn’t help but smile in the warmth with which the old man told the story.
“I have interacted with you long enough to know you are a good man,” the old man affirmed. “I will only ask what my father-in-law asked me that day. Depending on your answer, we shall go from there. No pressure.”
“O-okay,” he stumbled in response.
“The question is simple,” he stated. “What are your intentions with my little girl?”
He paused. Hadn’t he just expressed his intention? Hadn’t he just said “to take her hand in marriage”? Was that not enough? The look on the old man’s face was one nearly impossible to read. He couldn’t find consolation in thinking it was a trick question so he closed his eyes for a moment and when he opened them again, he spoke in the most confident tone he had mastered the whole interaction.
“She,” he professed. “is my one in a million. She gave me things I never knew I needed and I knew from the day I met her she was my endgame. My heart resolved that she was the last I would ever love. I may not be the richest, the smartest or the strongest but I want to give her the world and more. If marriage is the highest form of the expression of this, I shall marry her.”
The old man smiled slightly.
“You know that every day, as a man, is a war and to get through this battlefield, we need just that one. You found her mum and well…” he looked off to the door she had walked out of not long before. “She is my one. I know if I was ever asked where in the world I could be if I could have forever, I can look at her and tell her…”
“By your side.”
