The family used to have their 5pm drinks in the back veranda (you know, the same one I’ve mentioned before in other posts about wings and things)! I would be able to see them through the kitchen window because the kitchen was adjacent. So, if you can picture it, I would be in the kitchen in my hippy clothes, trying unsuccessfully to make whatever meal Inna had instructed me to and she and her two sons – Husband, who looked after her, and his brother who lived across the road with his wife and four kids – and sometimes other visitors, either elderly neighbours or Husband’s rather rambunctious mates, would be drinking and eating nibblies. It was definitely ‘the place to be’ and even though there was always a plentiful supply of alcohol, and nobody got drunk, as a rather naive teenager from a teetotalling family with fundamentalist Christian beliefs, I was (before the word was invented) utterly GOBSMACKED!
I would watch them out of the corner of my eye, through the lens of the kitchen window, and my own upbringing, whilst simultaneously trying to create white sauce out the of the glue I’d created, and I would panic!
Usually the term ‘culture shock’ is used to describe situations in which people from completely different countries are thrust together but there is no way of getting past (in retrospect) that I was extremely culture shocked and had nothing in my upbringing to measure this family against. I had lived in Canada and Papua New Guinnea and had met and been friends with numerous people from different races and yet this family presented me with something so out of my orbit that every day was a new shock.
But perhaps, when I think back, it was the shock of falling in love that most affected me. I’d had various crushes on boys and some innocent relationships but, when Husband opened the front door on that first day of my first job and said, gruffly, “It’s a farm – use the back door from now on”, then yelled to the scary elderly woman that “the girl” had arrived, my heart did a triple jump and that was it. I knew, without any doubt whatsoever, that he would be my husband. I didn’t know then, of course, that it would take another decade or so for him to realize the same thing!
jmgoyder 
ok – 1:30 am here – but had to read chapter 3 before bed! Fabulous!!! Love the way you are doing this – makes for great suspense and excitement. What a story thus far too:)
Thanks for the encouragement you night owl!
It’s a great story Julie …
Thanks Ingrid!!
I’m with them! It’s 1:42 AM here, I’m reading and loving it and can’t wait for the next installment.
~ Lynda
You guys are crazy but I love you!
I already replied but not sure if it went through – thanks Lynda!
It did! 😀
I’m the eternal Romantic, so you’ve got me hooked.
hehe!
I can hardly wait for the next chapter!
Thanks – that’s encouraging!
Great story. 😉
Oh, now I’ll have to keep writing it – ha!
This is a beautiful memory, and a wonderful love story. Sometimes it happens like that, huh?
I think it happens like that sometimes but doesn’t work out – for us it did NOT work out to begin with and then it did!
More!!!!!!
I find it so interesting that this story is compelling – okay, more is coming!
Fabulous new installment. This really would make a great book!
Yeah, I wrote a Mills and Boon version but it got rejected – alas!
Try again!
Ok!
I can’t wait to hear what made your husband see the light!
It’s a looooooooooooong story!
Very romantic.
Also turbulent!
You’ve got a book in the making here, Julie – seriously!
Well that is very encouraging – thanks!!!!!
Great story! I’m enjoying it!
Hell – why did I say I would write it? Now I have to! Haha!
Savoring every bit!
I don’t get why this story is so appealing – are we all romantics at heart? hehe!
I like it because it’s true and I know what you are going through now