How I Met Serach, Part XIV: Madame Tussaud's and Cameras

This is Part XIV of a series about how I proposed to Serach. To see the series, you could simply use the guide link under the header of the blog or this link right here titled "How I Met Serach".

Ezzie's note: Yes, yes, I know. It has now been seven years since Serach and I were engaged; five since I started writing this series; and two since the last time I wrote a part. Over the last few months, a number of people have come over to me and told me that they found my blog for the first time, or they were old readers but there wasn't much new material, and they started reading the How I Met Serach series... only to discover that I had never finished it. They viewed this as a huge tease, though as someone else noted, "Can't you guess how it ends!?" Perhaps it's time to get to the point, though... In Part XIII, I explained the difficulty in writing this series.

On our sixth date, which is the last date that I can remember the number of, Serach and I decided to have fun at Madame Tussaud's in Manhattan. For those who are not aware, not only is it incredibly hard to spell or pronounce, but Madame Tussaud's is basically a really cool wax museum, featuring wax figurines of all types of people past and present, from historical figures to current pop and sports stars to just plain old wax figurines to throw people off. Some of the figurines are more real-looking than others, and it's easy to bump into one and apologize before realizing or to be fooled by a person pretending to be wax. It's also a great place to start taking pictures of and with a [potentially] significant other, because it gives you so many excuses to be having fun and to pose that it's a natural outcome of the date.

Today, if you would walk into our kitchen, you'd notice an old, ragged looking magnet of a handful of old pictures from when we were dating and first married. Often, we're asked where we were with Matt Lauer, Katie Couric, and Al Roker - until people realize that while Katie is pretty waxy looking in real life, there's something about Al that isn't quite right. The reason those pictures are up are because those are the first pictures we have of one another, taken on my old Pentax that my parents got me when I graduated from high school... using something called film. The best picture of the night was probably one I took of Serach in the "World Leaders" section, a picture that a month or so later my charedi cousin's wife, in the first picture of Serach she ever saw, thought was one of the funniest things she'd ever seen: Serach flipping off Yassir Arafat.

In retrospect, I realized that a camera is a big deal in a relationship: It means that a person wants to have some kind of record of the time he or she is spending with another, and they're showing that to the person they're with. Later on, I realized my parents really liked Serach when my Mom, halfway through a meal together, pulled out her camera to snap a couple of pictures. Pictures are a threshold-breaking moment, and of course once the doubts on either side fade as to whether they are okay with the idea, it's a moment that is recorded for all time... or until the pictures are deleted. It's also a point at which a couple is allowing themselves to share these moments not just with each other, but with close family and friends to whom the pictures will be shown. 

For us, it was a really great night. We had an amazing time, and afterward I think we walked around Toys 'R Us again, just because it was close by and a nice place to walk around. Around this time, perhaps that very night, perhaps shortly afterward, I decided to call my parents and tell them about Serach. (You may recall that in Part XII my sister advised me not to tell them yet, and I made the mistake of listening to her... and not telling them for a while.) At this point, I knew this was really serious, and there was no reason not to tell them anymore. So one night sometime in late December 2003, with my roommate not around, I called up my parents on my dorm room phone.

"Hi Mom! I have something exciting to talk to you and Dad about..."

Next up: Mom and Dad aren't quite as thrilled as I am. (Shocker, I know.)