[Note: If you missed, Choices Parts I and II, it’s worth going back and reading them just so you have the back story on how this post came about (though I don’t think you have to read them in order). Mark off an hour to read this baby (or skim!) because it's all emotion, and as Saresh frequently reminds me, "When I see a long e-mail from a woman, all I can think is 'emotion!'" True, but I am female and I feel better after getting long-winded. ]

My mom and I have always been close, and when my family moved away it took years to adapt to not being around them all the time, but in particular my mother. Whenever I got back from a visit, my chest literally hurt for days and eventually the tears would dry up. This kind of episode occurred in a reducing fashion for many years right about until I had my daughter (my theory being that I’m now too busy and harried and emotional with her to be emotional about my own mother!).

Actually, my real theory is that having MIL be a part of my life has helped quite a bit. When we got to that time (that I couldn’t pinpoint if I had to) where our relationship became comfortable, she unwittingly reduced some of my missing mom angst. She fusses over me like only moms can, plying me with foods I can’t eat, trying to get me to sit while she takes care of DD (as if I don’t sit enough for my work!), pestering physician relatives to send mass quantities of free drugs so I don’t have to pay for my prescriptions, buying me purses, bragging about me to friends and relatives, and chastising her son for any imagined slight she thinks he might have done in potentially not taking care of me. Despite not watching Sci-fi at the house, I do get that “at home” feeling that I have missed so much. Not my own home, but being in the home of a mom – that one person who made me feel safe and loved and cared for and stuffed full of food. Of course it’s never quite the same, but it helps and I do feel very cared for.

When I originally wrote Choices, Part I, I was only thinking about my own choices – would I have still chosen Saresh knowing what I know now? For all the times I had considered that question in my life, it never occurred to me wonder if Saresh’s parents asked themselves the same thing (or a version of the same thing). Knowing what they know now, if they could go back in time, would they still make the same decisions regarding my relationship with their son? And furthermore, if the choice were available to them, would they choose another spouse for him? The only reason these (disturbing) questions arose for me at all was because Saresh’s parents actually brought the subject up on their own, which really took me by surprise.

We don’t talk about “the before” with them: the time we were dating and engaged when they would not accept us, for a variety of reasons that would make a post of their own. So life has basically been rolling along quite sweetly for us for a while now, the past nicely buried where I like it. One evening right after Thanksgiving, Saresh and DD were over at the in-laws and the in-laws brought up his cousin’s marriage status (this preoccupation is almost a bona fide hobby for them). In this particular instance, they wanted to offer dating advice (of all things!). I know he regretted the reopening of the past later, but they just picked at that scab and out it came – he asked them to remember how “helpful” their dating advice to him was when he was dating me, and what a horrible time that was between all of us.

His suggestion to revisit their behavior in the past set them on the defensive, I guess. They both went on to defend their behavior while we were dating, telling him that they still feel what they did was the right thing. When he told me later, he was so angry. I was very taken aback instead of angry this time. I thought they loved me now and my first painful thought was, “Do they still not want me?”

A couple days later, I asked Saresh the big question I had been too scared to ask: “Knowing what they now know, if your parents were able to go back and actually choose the spouse they wanted for you, do you think they’d choose someone else?” He paused for such a long time I almost cried. I wanted him to say, “Of course not! They love you!” but his hesitation made me feel my gut was right and that they would get rid of me in the past. Perhaps ridiculous, since it’s impossible to do and therefore moot, but I had a masochistic need to know.

Finally, he said, “I don’t think so.” Not exactly a screaming affirmation, but better than “Yeah – they’d ditch you in a heartbeat.” He went on to explain many logical points about what they appreciated about me that they wouldn’t have gotten with whomever they would have chosen, and that basically, they’re not the review and reflect and how do we apply this to our future actions kind of people – that they wouldn’t indulge in that kind of fantasy because it wouldn’t occur to them to do so. They also know that even if he had chosen an Indian girl, it wouldn’t have been the girl they wanted anyway, further adding the “moot point” line of thought. Though his answer made sense, I still felt hurt and deflated for quite some time. I didn’t want to talk about it anymore, and we haven’t.

I think I have gone about my marriage with a naïve sense that I’ve somehow affected a change – a mental shift within my immediate Indian community, starting with my in-laws. I have indulged in my own fantasies involving other young members of the Indian community pointing to our marriage in defense of their own relationships, “Look at Saresh and CBC – she fits right in and her in-laws love her! They’ve been married for years, and you like her too! How can you say marriage to my boyfriend wouldn’t work?” Though these words are probably never uttered between all the boyfriend/girlfriend secret keeping and my own inflated ego where I believe I’m important to others outside my husband and daughter, I truly imagined that by my own successful marriage and participation in the Indian community, that they would all somehow make different choices regarding the relationships of their children – I was a role model. HAH! Ha HAH!

Prior to this horrible “we were ‘right’ back then” speech, I had also learned a story that saddened me. The Indian daughter of some close friends of the in-laws recently started graduate school out East. Apparently part of her decision to go to the area involved her white boyfriend who would be attending a school there as well. I’m not privy to all the details, but to my knowledge she had not kept him a secret from her parents. They (or maybe just her father) went to visit her or help set her up in her new place and she wanted him/them to meet the boyfriend, and they refused. They would not meet him. I don’t know what has occurred, if anything, since then. She’s a quiet girl and I have imagined her hurt and internalizing all this by herself and having to explain this offense to her boyfriend. Her parents don’t even know what they’ve done to her, I’m sure. I was especially disappointed to hear this story as I happen to like this couple very much. They are very gracious people and have been nicer than nice to me from day one (well, day one of my acceptance that is!). I stupidly thought them more “progressive” (basing my assumption on niceness alone is why I was stupid). Being ego-centric as only humans can do, I was shocked that they could be so… like my in-laws were! Had my presence all these years had so little impact at all?

After much thought about what Saresh said, I believe he’s right, but more so than he probably meant. I don’t think my in-laws reflect back and wonder how life would be had they made different choices, but more importantly I don’t think any of them think of me at all in that capacity. My “now” with them has no bearing on the past or what happened. I was a non-entity – and “it wasn’t personal” (trying not to roll eyes as I type that). I wasn’t even in their sphere of existence and whatever they did or said did not have any impact on me whatsoever, because it wasn’t about me (or so the bell keeps clanging at me).

I think my in-laws and these other Indian parents I thought I had affected somehow are still compartmentalizing their reasoning. Sure, I affect them now because I’m real and they love the real me – the daughter-in-law that exists and the honorary Indian community member that exists. The me of the past wasn’t real to them, so how could they wish her away? She was never there. Just like that white boyfriend in the East isn’t there. He’s not real and my current happy marriage has nothing to do with whether or not a marriage could succeed for their daughter – to whom?

We, the unwanted boyfriends and girlfriends, are not real people. We are something to be warded off, like having a good pest control service. If you spray enough pesticide around your house, the potential pests won’t get in – you don’t have to personally step on the bugs. The bugs won’t even want to get near your house – they will just crawl away and you go your happy way and the bugs go theirs. Nobody gets hurt. No choice has to be made.

Perhaps the bug analogy is a bit harsh, and I know if pushed my in-laws would admit they technically knew I existed as a real person prior to their acceptance. I hardly think my in-laws would ever compare dating non-Indians to pest control; however, I am unable to compartmentalize my experiences and emotions as they are, so it feels a bit like pest control to me – me being the pest in question. Had I been able to engage in handy emotional compartmentalization, the (non)questioning of their past choices wouldn’t have hurt so badly, I suppose. Also, I think I would not be so terribly disappointed at the choices the Indian parents are making now, especially the ones I mistakenly felt I had some tiny impact on. I’m currently working on getting back to my preferred lifestyle in which I don’t worry about my in-laws playing Choose Your Own Adventure with their own lives.