This was probably the easiest thing to do, but the hardest thing to keep secret. Melanie’s parents have always welcomed me into their home, so I wasn’t worried about the outcome of the conversation. However, since Melanie lives with her parents, I was worried that one of them might accidentally let something slip to Melanie before I could propose. (It was hard enough keeping my parents from spilling the secret, and we only saw them for dinner a couple times in the weeks before the proposal.) To make it easier on them, I waited until the week of the proposal to talk to them.
First, I needed to get their phone number from Melanie without tipping her off. I managed to do so by suggesting that, since we had started listing one another as emergency contacts, we should probably have contact info for our various family members. (At the time, I thought it was a clever plan. I didn’t quite consider that I probably could have gotten the same information by checking the white pages, and avoided involving Melanie at all.)
I also casually asked Melanie when Savannah, her niece, would be at her parents’ house. Savannah visits her grandparents about once a week. She is almost two years old, which makes her old enough to articulate information accurately (“Rob was here talking to Grandpa Slick today!”) and young enough to have absolutely no sense of discretion (“Grandma told me not to tell you about Rob, Aunt Mel!”) . I’m sure Melanie’s mother could have played it off as Savannah making up stories if she had said something to Melanie, but I didn’t want to put a mother in the position of lying to her daughter or discrediting her granddaughter. Also, if Savannah did in fact see me, and she then had her grandmother denying I had been there, that seems like the sort of thing that could mess with a child’s burgeoning understanding of the world around her. So, I wanted to ensure that I stopped by the house when Vannah wouldn’t there.
It turned out the Savannah would be coming over on Wednesday, which limited my options to Monday or Thursday. When I left work on Monday night, I called their house and asked if I could drop by for a few minutes. I drove to their home in Fayetteville, and after some small talk, I told them my plans and asked them for their approval.
Her parents were quite happy with my news. I wanted to talk to both of them, since talking to just her father seemed a little anachronistic. Don, her father, apparently thinks the same thing. He told me (just as he’d recently told Justin, Melanie’s sister’s fiancé), that while he appreciated my show of respect, he considered the practice of asking parents for permission to marry their daughter to be an outmoded tradition from when women were considered property. (Jane, her mother, interjected that it was sweet of me to do so.) I asked if that meant there would be no dowry involved in marrying his daughter, and he confirmed that was the case. (Never hurts to ask, though.)
He also told me, almost as a formality, that he’d have me beaten up if I ever harmed Melanie. He said that he was probably getting too old to do so himself, but he could probably hire some guys to do it. I told him that it shouldn’t be a problem.
Jane was also excited, and gave me a hug. Being a devoted mother, she stressed that, due to Melanie’s disability, Melanie would require a lot of care. I assured her that we were prepared for that. Melanie and I do a good job of accounting for the various logistical issues that crop up from her being in a wheelchair.
Jane also declined to look at a picture of the ring. (Much like her daughter, she prefers surprises, and didn’t want to see the ring until Melanie had.) Which was a pity, because I’d spent 30 whole minutes picking it out…
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