Hi,
Today I was sitting on the step in the doorway that separated the kitchen form the living room watching him peel an apple. The kitchen was dark and cold but clean. I watched him kneeling over a small bin scraping the skin of the apple clockwise with a small knife. As I watched the skin unravel amongst quick, controlled and effortless shoves of the blade, each peel the same length and width as the next, a feeling of deep contentment seeped through me and I realized that I was finally happy.
This happiness is not the kind that you see in the movies. It is not the kind that is sugarcoated and oozing with Hollywood romance and passionate love followed by outbursts of jealousy, anguish and possession. My happiness this time is, for once, not dramatic. It is grounded in trust, in respect and in commitment. In a commitment to a person and a life that I have conscientiously chosen in spite of the many obstacles that I, personally, and we, as a couple, have faced.
I think back on one particular hardship we had this winter which was related to temperature. With 5 degrees Celsius outside, I wanted to turn on the heater, he did not. I am from a country where there is snow four months a year but where the indoors were always heated. He grew up with no snow and made no distinction between indoor and outdoor clothes. The temperature in the room was such a small and silly thing, and yet it really put a dent in our relationship. We tried to make compromises. I bought a down coat to wear inside; he let me turn on the radiator when it was below 5 degrees. Yet the only thing that ended up working was to ultimately be in separate rooms from December to February. Never in my life would I have imagined fighting over temperature.
And yet here we are in April, me sitting in the doorway watching him peeling an apple, feeling happier than I ever been in my life. Why?
Of course, the weather is warmer and that changes a lot. But I also know that, in spite of our differences, we are still living under the same roof, sharing, laughing, arguing and working hard towards the rest of our lives together. I realize that happiness doesn’t come easily. It comes from listening, understanding, having disagreements and coming out of them better than when you went in. It is the result of hard work, of being committed to a person and a life that you have chosen and understanding that, in the end, everyone has differences. You might even be luckier than others to see them so obviously through a cross-cultural relationship.
xoxo
Today I was sitting on the step in the doorway that separated the kitchen form the living room watching him peel an apple. The kitchen was dark and cold but clean. I watched him kneeling over a small bin scraping the skin of the apple clockwise with a small knife. As I watched the skin unravel amongst quick, controlled and effortless shoves of the blade, each peel the same length and width as the next, a feeling of deep contentment seeped through me and I realized that I was finally happy.
This happiness is not the kind that you see in the movies. It is not the kind that is sugarcoated and oozing with Hollywood romance and passionate love followed by outbursts of jealousy, anguish and possession. My happiness this time is, for once, not dramatic. It is grounded in trust, in respect and in commitment. In a commitment to a person and a life that I have conscientiously chosen in spite of the many obstacles that I, personally, and we, as a couple, have faced.
I think back on one particular hardship we had this winter which was related to temperature. With 5 degrees Celsius outside, I wanted to turn on the heater, he did not. I am from a country where there is snow four months a year but where the indoors were always heated. He grew up with no snow and made no distinction between indoor and outdoor clothes. The temperature in the room was such a small and silly thing, and yet it really put a dent in our relationship. We tried to make compromises. I bought a down coat to wear inside; he let me turn on the radiator when it was below 5 degrees. Yet the only thing that ended up working was to ultimately be in separate rooms from December to February. Never in my life would I have imagined fighting over temperature.
And yet here we are in April, me sitting in the doorway watching him peeling an apple, feeling happier than I ever been in my life. Why?
Of course, the weather is warmer and that changes a lot. But I also know that, in spite of our differences, we are still living under the same roof, sharing, laughing, arguing and working hard towards the rest of our lives together. I realize that happiness doesn’t come easily. It comes from listening, understanding, having disagreements and coming out of them better than when you went in. It is the result of hard work, of being committed to a person and a life that you have chosen and understanding that, in the end, everyone has differences. You might even be luckier than others to see them so obviously through a cross-cultural relationship.
xoxo
Me
