Engagement

Sigh.  My baby sister got engaged a week ago.

I can't say I'm ecstatic.

Don't get me wrong.  Her betrothed is a pretty neat guy, and more importantly, he seems to treat her very well.  My reservations really have little to do with him.  I'm just not one of those big sisters who's in any sort of hurry for her baby sister to get... married.  I guess Liên, and the rest of the world for that matter, feel that it would be "nice" if I were more "supportive."  Well, sure.  I could probably summon up the attitude if Liên weren't beautiful, intelligent, interesting, blah, blah, blah.  Because then, in the best of all possible worlds, having a husband could be a step up from having nothing.

Sort of like, "You had nothing, but now you have a person who probably loves you and a societally accepted method of trying to make babies.  Congratulations."  You would think that with both of us being so headstrong, I wouldn't be such an awkward mother hen about it all.  But as long as I don't think she's gonna die an old lonesome maid or develop some weird self-esteem problem from not getting married by age fifty or whatever, I'm just in no rush.  Let me put it another way.

Here's a picture of her rudely failing to keep up with conversation.

Here's the two of us in an uncomfortable situation.  Those are pretty much all we talk about, and if we ever wrote up a book of memoirs, our selective memory would be prioritized by discomfort.  "Remember the time we were in the pool and suddenly an anonymous sibling was running around it really fast but naked?  And everybody else was staring?  And then Chi Ngọc couldn't catch up to him but kept running anyway and screaming in Vietnamese?"

This picture was taken the last time I was stronger than Liên.

What I'm trying to say is that we've been through a lot.  I know her.  It's not just another, "Happy engagement, ohmigod I'm so excited for you, you two are like the cutest couple ever."  It's a really big deal.

But in all fairness, I don't really have the right to go around shrieking, "Don't get married!  It's awful, I hate it!"  Not only would that be slightly inconsiderate to my sweet George, but I also got engaged at her age and never regretted it.  And just for the record, if being unsupportive can be considered a measure of sisterly love, then Liên loved me more than you would care to know a few years back.

Seriously though, if there's one thing I know about Liên, it's that she has the means and the guts to do whatever she wants.  I normally don't disagree with any of her decisions, and nobody ever stands in her way.  Now she wants to be with Bill - forever.  Bill, you are a lucky bastard.

Bill is a professional video editor.
Their friend Tom taped the proposal, and Bill made it into this.

N.B.  When Liên was thinking of how to propose,
her first reaction to the idea of asking Bill for a lifelong commitment
just moments before he plummeted 40 meters downwards was:

"Yeah, but Lan, what if that isn't scary enough?"