Kissing Outside the Lines

by Diane Farr

  So no, Ellie never gave up on James, just like she never gave up on me even when I pushed her hard, just like she didn’t give up on her father when his silence ignited her self-doubt. Rather, she and James stayed in the dating stage for five years, working their way through it. James’s hopes of having a child by forty were significantly off track when a life-changing piece of advice fell in his girlfriend’s lap and it seemed the obstacle blocking their way around the last bend they were stalled behind was removed.

  Ellie’s older brother had followed in his cultural and familial traditions. He married a faithful Jewish woman and together they had children soon after marriage. On a visit to see Ellie, her brother listened to her latest concerns about where she stood with their parents and their father’s continued hope that she would abandon this relationship for something more familiar. And finally her brother gave it to her straight:

  “He said, ‘You have to decide, Ellie. You have to decide if this is the relationship for you regardless of them, because while you still have a hint of indecision, Dad will continue to angle you toward how they see your life. And until you are clear and firm on what you want, they will continue to fight for what they know they want—even if that is only because they assume it will be easier for you.’”

  It seems so simple, but what this credo finally forced Ellie to do was exactly what she is advising me to do now: take ownership of the life she’d found and not wait for anyone else to bless it. She had to say goodbye to the idea of picking a lifelong partner who would please her parents’ goals or vision. And in her case, Ellie, too, had to say goodbye to the long-standing idea of the kind of husband she thought she would have—the banker or lawyer the rest of her boarding school classmates married. Do they enjoy a more comfortable life than two artists will probably ever share? Perhaps, but without the fun and energetic spirit she found in James, who has supported her through all of this and then some—whom she did and still does love like no one ever before—what would her life be?

  In fact, the first time Ellie went to Trinidad with James, she called me and half-joked that she had found “her people.” On this small island, Ellie found a whole country full of people who looked just like her. There has been so much mixing of races over many generations in Trinidad that the bulk of its people look like Ellie. Indian? Or Latin? Brazilian? Or Persian, or some other mix you can’t quite put your finger on. But yet, here they are. Finally—people who look just like the girl who always looked different from the rest. And these people all thought Ellie was from Trinidad until she opened her mouth. Her accent was different, but her spirit and color were just like theirs. And in a strange way, Ellie loved James for this, too.

  Taking everything into account, Ellie made a conscious decision to marry and become a mother to someone who would be a wonderful hybrid, just like her, again. Which then allowed her parents’ disappointment to run its course. It was always clear that Ellie’s parents would love her no matter what, that they would be in her life no matter what, but for so many people in these situations the idea of failing your parents often looms larger than the actual act of doing so. After letting go of that fear, Ellie fully embraced the man she had loved for a long time by now, and we both agree that it seemed almost immediate that her family then embraced James as well.

  “There was no TV moment. There was no yelling in the beginning, no hugging in the end. We all just kept showing up to do the work and eventually it just worked,” says my friend with an ease I envy.

  But the thing I realize as the rain lets up for just one moment in this town is that almost everyone I have spoken with speaks to having had this experience. A moment in a relationship where you fully commit to your partner, no matter what the cost with one of your families. There are more dramatic incidents in some paths to this decision (and to the altar), but none of that drama yields the result I’m searching for, because I am hoping to inspire a change of heart. This change is so gradual that it lacks fanfare. It is not only inspirational but also life-changing—if I will let it happen. I just need to find the inner strength, the personal faith, and the divinely inspired patience that I need to let it happen.

  * AFTER DANIEL GOES TO BED, I HAVE TWO important questions for Ellie about her beautiful wedding—because I’m feeling inspired to get back to mine. There are two images from her union that remain like slow-motion stills of what love and acceptance mean to me. And now I would like to know how they came to fruition.

  James proposed and he and Ellie soon married on a floating dock in Lake Union on one of the most beautiful days I’ve ever seen in the Pacific Northwest. Just as the dock began to float like a lily pad away from the rowing club, Ellie joined all of her invited guests. Not with her father, who was with all of us, but alone Ellie walked to meet her partner.

  The image of her walking herself down the aisle (which was really a small hill to a floating barge) was so breathtaking because she had done all the homework to get here. She walked herself to this choice and was owning every step of it now as she approached her soon-to-be husband—which made me cry like a baby at how proud I was of her. Proud that she did not hide behind her family’s fears or ignore the reality that she herself had lived. Proud that she took the time to feel all the feelings she had about her former life and her future life. When Ellie finally arrived under the chuppah to meet James, next to their female rabbi, in her stunning white dress on beautiful olive skin, she looked like a princess about to become a queen.

  “We looked at the sentiment of what is behind a walk down the aisle and wanted to give ourselves to each other. Because this was our own doing. So no one was walking me down the aisle because I was giving myself to this man,” says Ellie.

  Later, inside the dining hall, the post dinner music trumped even the beauty of the afternoon. James’s family flew in from all over the world to enjoy his long-awaited wedding day. And to facilitate the enjoyment, particularly the dancing, this bride and groom hired a twelve-piece steel drum band—whom they also asked to play traditional Israeli wedding songs. At the end of the evening, when I approached the band members to shake their hands and say how wonderful a job they did, they told me how nervous they were to play “Hava Nagila” for the first time in public.

  “I was really nervous how this was gonna go off,” Ellie says now when I recall this exchange. “I just kept hoping they practiced.”

  They did. The bandleader told me she also wasn’t ever positive how it was going to go. She was so nervous that the entire band sat in the parking lot the night before Ellie’s wedding after loading their equipment in and played the song over and over. Well, watching Ellie’s extended family moving in one direction and then the other while clapping and holding hands, with James’s family doing the same, to Hebrew songs on Caribbean drums is one of the most resounding images I have ever seen at a celebration of love.

  * I REALLY CAN’T WAIT TO MARRY THE GIANT Korean, and have my very evolved friend Ellie in attendance—whose brother’s advice is now rattling around in my head as I try and decide what it means for me. I cried so much during Ellie’s wedding that I was actually mortified in front of other guests, and here I am crying again. Only now I’m trying to make sure I don’t freak out Daniel, who is so excited that I am here he has gotten out of bed three times.

  When I look at this handsome boy now, I remember the first thing I asked his mother when he was born. What does the child of black, white, olive, Chinese, Spanish, and Scottish parents look like? To which she said, “He just looks like our Daniel. With really Chinese eyes.”

  Daniel is the poster child for mixed-race marriage. His hair is like chocolate spaghetti that fans out high from his head. His eyes are almond and his lips are pouty. His skin is wonderfully warm and silky. Ellie’s holiday card last year was a picture of him drinking milk while a random Mexican woman stood off to the side taking his picture also. I liked it so much because, knowing their family, I was fully aware that the woman in the frame was just another instant fan of Danie
l’s look and aura, rather than someone they knew. I feel like he is the face of modern America.

  Tonight I really don’t want to upset this long-awaited child, but I can’t stop crying. I don’t know if I’m purging all these tears from happiness for Ellie because I finally appreciate all she has done to get here, or because I finally and sincerely feel hope for my own future and children while looking at her son. But Ellie is as patient as ever with me, while she waits for me to find the words to express all that I am feeling.

  “I’m thinking about your brother’s advice,” I mumble between my tears, while balancing a sleepy boy on my lap. Ellie reminds me again that the advice was to fully accept that this was the relationship for her—and to let go of them—and now I’m cutting her off because I can’t get my words out fast enough.

  I know who my “them” is, and I actually believe I accepted Seung as mine before them even existed. I think I’m a little overwhelmed by them at the moment, though, and I’m putting my attention in the wrong place. If I follow the pearls in this chain of wisdom, I should just stay committed to whatever Seung and I want for our life together, while I continue to beat back the people pleaser in me who wants to win them over, the micromanaging control freak in me who is attempting to change another person’s thoughts or behaviors, and that fearful inner child who lives in the doubt room inside me and would rather miss out on things than fail. If I can possibly let go of all that just going on inside me—and think less about them—then I should end up answering only to the best me.

  As I get all that out and my breath starts to calm, Ellie smiles at me. This causes Daniel to clap his hands and turn around on my lap to wipe my tears and say, “No more crying now.”

  And I listen to this wise soul.

  NOW I THINK I KNOW where Ellie got some other parts of her peace. Aside from her and James doing all of their homework, her life recentered itself with her son. As it also did for everyone else around her.

  The universe must have been rewarding James for his patience because Daniel was a gem from the moment he arrived. Ellie and he chose to wait to find out his gender until the delivery room. When their son was born, there was the inevitable question about circumcision from Ellie’s parents, as it’s is an important rite of passage for Jewish people. Ellie and James had discussed this during the tail end of their pregnancy and decided a circumcision wasn’t for them. Ellie’s mother gently broached this subject with her daughter while they were still in the hospital postbirth, asking Ellie to reconsider. This new grandma gave all the reasons she and Ellie’s father felt it would be a good thing for Daniel. Ellie’s father then joined the conversation, and when Ellie told him that her and James’s decision was final, her father actually wept. Which is exactly when James entered the room. These new grandparents got their feelings together quickly and left the room to allow the new parents their private time. Ellie refused to tell James what had transpired, saying they could talk about it at home.

  When James got together with some of his friends after the birth, they congratulated him and asked when the bris would take place (the name of the ceremony for circumcising babies in the Jewish faith on day eight of life). James was shocked to know that all these guys, many of whom were not Jewish, knew about this ritual. What they said they all knew was that if you marry a Jewish girl and you have a son, you inevitably circumcise about a week later.

  James went home and asked Ellie about this, and about what had transpired between her and her parents at the hospital. Ellie explained and James wanted to call his father-in-law immediately. He wanted details of how the mohel (Jewish holy person who does the incision) would handle things, but he was already sure he would accommodate their request. He asked Ellie’s father and brother to handle the details because he wouldn’t know how to orchestrate this ceremony, but he was willing to allow them this important ritual in their culture, even though it meant circumcising his son. And Ellie sat back holding Daniel, completely blown away at how far they had all come over these years.

  Watching Ellie and James grow over the three years since Daniel’s arrival has been nothing but awing to me. Ellie has gotten the best of both worlds—a life with the man she loves and the support of her family and his. I’m often left speechless at how easily motherhood has come to Ellie and how well these two artists, who both write full-time and love their city and have no plans to leave it anytime soon, have made a wonderful life for themselves and their son. Ellie now points out it was just “wasted worrying” on her part over where her “someday” family might live. This year Ellie turns thirty-seven and James will be fifty. She is hoping to give him a second child and they are “practicing” at that regularly.

  “For all the worrying I did, it is so much easier that James is a heathen. There is no Christmas tree in our house because my faith is the religion of our home. And Daniel got into a fantastic school where four other children in his class are half black and half something else. We also both hope to live an expat life at some point, so Daniel can see how all these cultures that make up his background live in their own homelands. So basically, everything I wanted I got, with the added bonus of James being the love of my life. And without James, I might not have ever looked at my own experience. His differences from me inspired me to look at myself. And all the work we did together discovering who we both are will probably be the thing that keeps us together—for all our lives.”

  CHAPTER 12.

  A KOREAN NIGHT + AN AMERICAN NIGHT = A QUELLED FIGHT

  “By the powers vested in me—by the Internet—I now pronounce you husband and wife.”

  —BARRY LITTMAN, ESQ.

  I’M IN SEUNG’S hotel room and his mother is dressing me. She has laid out my Korean wedding gown, all four layers of it, in the order she will put them on me. Seung is in the other room with his father, who is dressing him. All four of us are very nervous and excited as two hundred people wait in the lobby below us, about to be bussed to the Friday night dinner and ceremony location for our Korean wedding. Despite the nerves, both of Seung’s parents seem to feel pride as they prepare us to make this rite of passage. My mother is on her way over from her hotel room to watch me prepare for a ritual that neither one of us could have possibly imagined would make up part of my wedding.

  THE INITIAL REJECTIONS WE got from Seung’s father’s relatives never changed. And once we embraced that their decisions were out of our control, those decisions stopped affecting our relationship and our wedding. This bump actually taught us an important lesson: A wedding is like a marriage in that you plan the best you can for your life together, deal with whatever presents itself, and move forward from there. And for us, if you’re getting married in your late thirties, part of the program is to learn to move forward with as much grace and positive energy as you can. I learned this entirely by Ellie’s example. Seung’s hurt feelings passed quickly, since he still had so many family members—especially cousins—to celebrate this day with, but I think I actually figured out how to resolve mine before my flight even returned to L.A. from my weekend in Seattle. I took a cue from Ellie because I saw how wonderfully her life with James turned out. I recalled the image of her on that lone walk to her sacred space beside James, where she gave herself to this man in marriage, without the good and the bad that are sometimes mutually exclusive when it comes to family, and how much fuller her life is because of that choice. I want to be like Ellie. As I want to be like Suzanne and Jennifer and Lisa—and I hope like hell Natalia will join us, too, someday soon—on the betrothed side of interracial coupledom. So with a little more therapy—and many long late-night talks with honest old friends as well as brave new ones, who fully healed what ailed me before I reached this room today—I am here. I let go of the impulse to right any supposed wrongs or prove myself to anyone. And I got to invite several more of my friends, too! All of whom I can’t wait to see in less than one hour from now, in a wedding gown fit for a Korean princess.

  MY HANBOK (TRADITIONAL KOREAN GOWN) is a pin
k and blue silk that starts at my collarbone and gets bigger and bigger as it makes its way to the floor. The bottom layer begins with cotton on top and morphs into tulle at my middle, creating a bell from my waist on downward. The next two layers are of varying lengths, made of brightly colored silk, with hand-sewn flowers in places that no one but Ama and me will ever see. The icing on the cake is a silk topper and a tiny jacket that is regal yet still feels girlish with its gold trim.

  I could not possibly have assembled this dress without my soon-to-be mother-in-law’s assistance. She bought it for me, but in her typically unobtrusive way she also allowed me to pick it out for myself. Seung and I went to three hanbok dressmakers in Koreatown, Los Angeles, before finding our matching attire. The first family-run store was intimate, which made it all the more obvious when the women working there never addressed me directly or even looked me in the eye while I stood before them betrothed to a Korean national. It did not give us a warm or welcoming feeling, so we tried another.

  The second store was fancy, with gowns that cost thousands more than my white wedding dress. The women at this shop were excited to dress me, but worried that nothing they had would be long enough for my body and they would therefore have to custombuild a Hanbok for me. Seung did not like the modern take on their designs for an ancient ritual, so off we went to the third boutique. But this was actually a grocery store with millions of dollars in fancy gowns tucked away in the back. Seung knew a Korean couple who’d bought their Hanbok here, and the same day we got the address to this off-the-beaten-path dressmaker, Seung’s father called us from Seoul, also recommending the same shop. As I walked past the many kinds of ramen and fresh vegetables in front, I couldn’t help but feel as if Jennifer, who married Sonu in the traditional Indian wedding, was with me, since she, too, found her wedding dress in an Indian grocery store in Virginia.