Change

 

“Will you marry me?” said he, kneeling in the middle of the master bedroom of our new and yet-to-be-furnished house, with a pair of shivering hands holding a pot of daisy plant where a few red daisies were blooming beautifully.

It was the night of the 24th of December. I was tying up my long hair and preparing to clean the room - the typical housekeeping mode - before this proposal occurred.

“Yes, of course,” I said. No dramatic tears, no the “oh-my-god” face, but full of question marks of when did he keep this pot of flower in the house without me, who had been spending days and nights with him, noticing it?

“It was one night, a few days before we had to come to the house for the renovation. I rushed to the nearby grocery store to get this pot of flowers and drove all the way from Penang island to here. Wondering where should I put this flower pot so that it could get enough sunlight and water but would not be found by you, I eventually found the balcony a perfect place to hide it. Smart me,” he said, in a super proud tone as he managed to surprise me.

My life had changed since that day - it was another milestone in my life.

We were lucky enough to possess a house at this young age, thanks to my parents-in-law. What we had to do was just make it into a liveable house as we like.

Feeling tired of the current living arrangement where we had to “commute” to our home office in another unit, which was on another floor, of the apartment complex we stayed, the urge of moving into the new house - a double-storey landed house where our home office will just be one staircase away from the master bedroom - increased day by day.

Our weekends, since we activated our house renovation plan, filled with visits to different furniture and electrical appliances stores. How to design our house became the main topic of bedtime talks.

After a few months of hustle and bustle, we finally moved into our new house, or, home, in April. The furniture and electrical appliances we installed right when we moved in were those that were essential for us to live in the house. Other “luxury” stuff was added month by month, either when we saved enough money for it or we found that it would be useful to us. The theme of our interior design was brown and black, full of wood and metal - many said it was industrial style, which I took as a compliment. My favourite corner of the house, besides the kitchen, was the lounge where we had two reclining chairs next to each other beside the French windows, with a big bookshelf - the infamous IKEA Billy bookshelf - behind the chairs. Both of us would spend our quality time there, reading books or, sometime, doing nothing, on the chairs.

Looking back on the journey of furnishing the house and living together with him from the day he proposed, many things were changing day by day - be they physically or emotionally. I learned more about him throughout the days, despite knowing him for over 10 years. We had to take care of our own house, from cleaning the house to repairing some small glitches. We had to take care of ourselves and each other, from making meals daily to doing laundry. We had to be responsible for everything we did, and be more deliberate when making decisions, as grown adults and married couples.

All these changes were not immediate, but gradual, yet it was deep into my life. I was glad that I had grown this far since - from getting more efficient in doing house chores to being more considerate and having more patience. Looking forward to the next major “change” of my life - let us see what is next?

This is one of the writing exercises I did in an English writing session.