Things I wish I didn't overhear on Christmas

• I was laying in bed at 10:30 pm in Washington DC. The flight didn't go so well. There was so much turbulence that the insides of my stomach had become the outsides of my stomach. Twice. And there were no barf bags on our row of the airplane, so Abraham and I were the collateral damage. The airplane steward meekly handed me a wet paper towel. To make things worse, the traffic circles of DC had me resting my head out the window of Abraham's sister's car. So I was laying in bed while the rest of Abraham's family was visiting in the living room. I heard two words very distinctly, "Propose" and "Christmas," followed by an exasperated Abraham, "SHHH."


• Propose... Christmas? But Abraham is Jewish. I knew he wouldn't propose on Christmas in front of just one half of my broken family. My mother didn't put up a tree this year. My father told me no one else was coming to his house on Christmas. I put the thought out of my mind, and, frankly, I forgot about it.


• We had finished Christmas at my mother's house and I began the hour-long drive to my father's. Abraham was pretty insistent that I find a gas station to stop at so he could buy some beer. It struck me as odd because my mother makes him more nervous than my father does, and he didn't even drink at my mother's. Abraham got beer and began drinking it immediately at my father's house.


• By this time we had been traveling extensively for the past 6 days visiting our different families in 4 different states. I was fatigued. My head drooped into the couch pillows with my cosmopolitan in hand. I was fighting a bad cold. Abraham said he was going outside to visit with my father while he grilled the steaks. Abraham is shy and has never spoken to any of my family one on one, but I wasn't being any worthwhile company myself.


• In the car while we were driving home, Abraham announced that my father wanted to meet his parents. Apparently my father even offered to drive halfway up the East coast to meet them. My father is a very outgoing person, and I was a little surprised I didn't hear my father say this five times at the dinner table. I never heard him say it at all. 


• Abraham's mother kept phoning him. Once when we were at my father's house, once in the car as we drove home and once again when we reached his home. The only person to call like that is my mother, not his. Abraham walked out of the bedroom and closed the door behind him. Usually he talks to his mom on speakerphone.


• And then it hit me: the beer... talking to my father alone outside... my father wanting to meet his parents... his mother's incessant phone calls... the secrecy... propose... Christmas... 


• Abraham had asked my father permission to marry me.