Breaking news

These past few days have been quite chaotic. Shortly before I landed, my favourite grandma had a nasty fall and ended up breaking her hip in numerous places. She’s not in pain anymore, but the doctor that performed her reconstructive surgery yesterday said she’d take a few months to recover completely. In all this activity surrounding my grandma—trips to the hospital, handholding old relatives (and coddling their grand-children!) who keep popping up to visit her, sorting out food for some of the longer-term stays, disseminating information about her progress, …—I haven’t had much time really to talk to my parents about my life; about Stacey.

A couple of months ago, I was lost. There were voids in my life I knew not how to fill. The wide array of choices I had laid out before me for when my contract in Scandinavia completed made it quite obvious: I was OK with doing whatever, wherever, in my search for something more. All this began to change as I got closer to Stacey. After spending nearly every moment with her since I first met her, it became clear to me that I was happy right where I was with her. I liked my job and my friends and my home and my city (fucking cold and dark as it can be!). Unfortunately, this realisation came just a few weeks before my current contract expired, taking down with it my intimately-linked European work/residence permit. We tried quite valiantly the last ten days or so to sort something out in terms of employment, but my months of telling people I was leaving (to teach kids) and turning down offers to extend my stay was hard to undo. Not wanting to take any chances, I decided to book a ticket back to India, and sort out how to return from there. Since we were confident things would work out on that front, I left much of my stuff back in Oslo with my friends and Stacey suggested she’d join me, transforming this hasty trip into a month-long vacation in India.

She’ll be arriving soon. We’ll be leaving soon to find somewhere relaxing that’s neither too hot nor too wet in July.

I wanted to sit down and explain all this to my folks. Talk about how I feel toward her. Talk about my life, the choices I’ve made and the ones I’m still yet to. That they needn’t worry for me. That I’m still their responsible boy. That no matter how unsure I am about the future, I’m nearly thirty years old and I’m brave enough to do the things I want to. And happy for it.

But I can’t. They’ve been distracted by another phone-call requesting them back at the hospital.

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