“Ah. More hockey.”
“Yep. He’ll be gone for a week.”
“I do not like you spending so much time alone.”
“It’s not my favorite thing,” I admit. “But his season is almost over. The last game is on April eighteenth. Then he doesn’t go back to hockey until September.”
My father hums. Though maybe that’s a grunt. “You’ll get married this summer.”
I sigh. “I don’t know, Dad.”
“You’re still not rushing,” he notes.
Grinning, I shrug, though I know he can’t see me. “Dad, what if I don’t want to get married? What if I don’t want to have kids? What if I like the way things are right now?”
“Is this you talking or Julian?”
“Me.” I’m not actually sure what Julian wants. I’m assuming he wants to get married. Male Order Spouseisfor finding a husband, after all.
“Are you telling me that’s what you want?”
I take a deep breath and close my eyes. “No. I want to get married,” I admit. “But I don’t think I want kids. And Idolike the way things are with me and Julian right now, which is why I don’t want to rush it.”
“Americans take a long time to wed,” he comments.
Laughing, I shake my head. “Americans don’t typically have arranged marriages, so they go through the dating scene, then engagement, which, according to the television, can be like six to twelve months before their wedding.”
“I see. And this proves successful for marriages?”
“No,” I say, still laughing. “I looked it up, actually. It’s 40-50% for theirfirstmarriages and even higher for second marriages.”
“I think you should follow the Indian way of marriage,” Dad says.
I grin. “Me too. But I want to marry this American, so we need to compromise on some things, you know?”
“Compromise is good in most cases, but make sure you’re not always the one compromising. It’s not a compromise if you’re the one sacrificing, Arush.”
“You can’t think bad of someone you don’t know,” I defend. “I haven’t compromised on anything at all.” Which I think is pretty true. “Julian’s even been learning to cook Indian food for me.”
“I see. He will not compromise on a wedding this summer?”
Sighing, I open my eyes and look around, trying to make him understand. “Dad?—”
“Let me confide something to you,” Dad says, and I hear a door closing in the background. It wasn’t loud where he was before, but now it’s silent. “When I was young, I wanted to travel the world. I wanted to see everything. Visit every continent. Try foods from around the world as they cook it. Experience different cultures. I wanted memories to tell my children one day about all the adventures I had.”
Knowing my dad, I can see that he’d had that dream. But as far as I know, that didn’t happen.
“My father came to me between university and graduate school with my proposed wife, and I gave up that dream to start my family.”
My stomach sinks.
“I don’t regret that decision at all. I love your mother with all my heart and you kids are my entire world. But I do have a regret. Do you know what that is?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“That I didn’t adapt that dream to the new path of my life. I still could have done all those things, but brought my family with me. I didn’t realize this until you were ten or so, and started taking my family on adventures abroad. But I lost a lot of years thinking I had to make a choice between worldly adventures ormy family being my adventure. My regret is that I didn’t start our adventures right away.”
I smile, resting my chin on my knees again.
