When I was younger, my family always made fun of me for being nosey. If something was lost, they'd ask me where it was and I always knew. Being the youngest, I didn't want to be left out so I made sure to poke my nose everywhere it wasn't supposed to be. Not only was I nosey but I was also extremely protective of my mother. She never needed it but apparently, I thought it was my job. I'll never forget the moment when my nosiness collided with my need to protect and comfort her.
Whenever my mom laughed really hard, she would kind of wail. She always said that it was the only way her stomach muscles would loosen up. Her wailing laugh was a common sound in our house which always made my sisters and me laugh. Late one night when I was just 9 years old, I heard the familiar sound; except this time, it wasn't coming from laughter but from sorrow. Without knocking, I crept in, saw my mom kneeling on the floor with her head buried in the bed. She was on the phone. I assumed one of her friends was telling her a hilarious story and obviously I needed to know what it was. I stood there thirsty for a punch line when she looked up at me with a face full of tears and bloodshot eyes. I sat down on the bed and rubbed her back for what felt like hours.
She was on the phone with her fiancé, Richard. Through her sobbing and weeping, I was able to piece together that his parents had taken away their consent to be married. As members of the Bahai Faith each member has to obtain consent from their parents to marry. They had flown to Northern California to ask his parents for consent, which they had happily given -- only to have his mother call days later to rescind it because she was worried about what people would think of her having a black daughter-in-law.
My mom and Rich knew each other in passing, years before when my sisters, his son and daughter were members of a Bahai youth group. They didn't keep in touch until they bumped into each other years later at a Bahai celebration. He took her on a date and they both knew that night they had found the One. Eight months later, he proposed. Rich had been renting a room from his best friend since his house was an hour from his job. With his son being the only one living there and my mom's job being down the street, he asked my mom, my sisters, myself and my grandma to all move into his house. After they got consent taken away, he decided that he would continue renting a room from his friend forever if he had to. They called off the wedding, not the relationship.
