My fiance and I?
It’s true. I have a fiance and, inturn, am a fiance. I’m really happy I can’t figure out how to type the accent. That would be way to pretentious. Before I get side-tracked I don’t want people to misconceive this post as bitterness towards marriage or engagement or love. I’m elated. Thanks to all of you who have been a support in our lives. I’m truly grateful. The engagement ordeal was a bit of struggle. We hiked down an extremely steep slope to the bottom of a massive waterfall through stinging nettle. I proposed. Rachel said yes after she said sure. We drank water we shouldn’t have drank. We tried to find an easier way out and failed ending up on a cliff island. It took an an hour and a half to get to that island. We had to return and hike back the way we came. The bad-water induced spell-binding bowel problems that lasted the remainder of the week. It was a great. Really.
But none of that prepared me for unleashing the f word. Rarely has a word slithered out of my mouth with such apprehension and disdain. It feels so fake. Maybe my problem is genealogical. My mom, after all, was known to introduce my father as her friend for the first two years of their marriage. I’m not artistic. I have a terrible French accent. The word does not fit my je ne sais quoi. I can’t pull it off.
It brings me back to a very bizarre period of my life in China where I would read Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina before bed with Mozart’s 4oth in the background. I thought I was cool. And that’s the thing so did all of Tolstoy’s Russians. They would speak French to each other to show they from the upper class. I wonder if they had the gall to use the word fiance. At the time I thought it was great and cultured. I even began to speak French in China.
The point is I’m not going to masquerade in those 19th century Russian drawing rooms using a word that feels empty. So if you could please help me out I need a new word. Any suggestions?
Simon Says 