“It’s like drinking a pint of Guinness in the office after tax season,” I said in explanation when he didn’t seem to grasp the fundamentals of HAPPINESS.

Nick the accountant nodded his head in total understanding. “But there isn’t going to be much HAPPINESS in your trip once you tell the family about the handsome and humble American you’re involved with.”

When I first came to the United States, if anyone had told me I would be dating, living with, engaged to an American, I would have scoffed. Seven years later, I wore a pretty little diamond on my ring finger and carried in my heart the security only a good relationship could provide.

When Nick dropped me off at the international terminal he made sure I had my papers and passport. Careful, caring Accountant Nick!

“Off you go,” he said with a broad smile. “And call me once you get there.”

He wanted to come with me to India. “To meet your family, see your country,” he had said, and I gave him a look reserved for the retarded. He must be joking, I thought. How could he be serious? Hadn’t I told him time and again that my family was as conservative as his was liberal and that he would be lynched and I would be burned alive for bringing him, a foreigner, my lover, to my parents’ home?

“Off I go,” I said reluctantly, and leaned against him, my black leather bag’s strap sagging against my shoulder. “I’ll check email from Nate’s computer. If I can’t call, I’ll write.”

I didn’t want to go. I had to go.

I didn’t want to go. I had to go.

The twin realities were tearing me apart.

I didn’t want to go because as soon as I got there, my family would descend on me like vultures on a fresh carcass, demanding explanations, reasons, and trying to force me into marital harmony with some “nice Indian boy.”

I had to go because I had to tell them that I was marrying a “nice American man.”