Panda eyes are a sign of happiness

7 June 2007

A couple of weeks ago John and Sam came over to see us. They’d been on holiday in San Francisco, so we hadn’t seen them for a while. They spent the afternoon at Sam’s parents and then arrived here to find a house full of people. I’d been out to lunch with Helen, Suzy and Lauren and the latter two had followed me home to ~~bother me~~ hang out for a while. Then Dave turned up to collect Lauren, to stop her bothering me.

Suzy stayed quite a while into the evening as Nick wasn’t at home, so she thought she might as well stay here and enjoy my thrilling company. Eventually my continual staring at my site stats was too much for her and she headed home. After waving her off I went to join the others in the sitting room.

“Now that Suzy’s gone,” John said, “We have some news…” While on holiday in San Francisco, John had proposed to Sam in the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge. She accepted. My brother’s going to marry my schoolfriend and I can’t see the keyboard any more because my eyes are full of tears. Again.

If you want to make me cry, just talk about this wedding. A little later that evening after all the talking and celebrating, I said to Sam “I’m going to have a sister-in-law!”, only it came out more like “I’m going to have a *sob* siiiister *sniff* in *wail* laaaw!”. The same thing happened when I phoned Suzy the next day to tell her what had happened after she’d left. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to tell you this without crying … John and Sam *gulp* … no, I won’t … are going to get married *snivel*“.

The challenge for Mum was not telling her side of the family, though she kept speaking to them on the phone. We were going to be seeing them all in 2 weeks at Granpop’s 85th birthday party and John and Sam wanted to give their news in person. So I couldn’t write anything here either, just in case my cousin read it.

Eventually Sunday 3rd June dawned and we all headed up to Northamptonshire for the party – with me fit to bust from the excitement of it all. When Sam and John arrived, Sam did a beautiful job of hiding her hand so that nobody was blinded by the glare from the three big diamonds on her finger. After a while Mum rounded up the closest family members and the Marchants who already knew joined them too so that John could announce his news. Everyone was delighted and as I wiped my eyes Sam asked me, “These are tears of happiness, aren’t they?”. Absolutely! Just remind me to get some waterproof mascara before the wedding.