The last major step to formalizing our engagement took place last Saturday. In true Filipino tradition, Moks’s family went to our house carrying tons of food his mother prepared, and his father asked my father for my hand in marriage. Well, sort of. It went like this:
my tatay: e ano pa bang pag-uusapan natin, e naiayos na naman nila (referring to moks and myself) lahat ng detalye e. iba na kasi ang panahon ngayon e, sila na ang nagdedesisyon.
moks’s tatay: oo nga po e. tinatanong ko nga po si mark kanina kung sasabihin ko bang hinihingi po sana namin ang kamay ni leah, e baka po kasi kako sabihin niyo e, kamay lang ba ang gusto niyo?
That was pretty much the entirety of the whole pamamanhikan. The rest of the time was spent chitchatting, eating Tita China’s sumptuous cooking, and laughing at Moks for his booboos and blunders before they got to our house. Tito Addit, Tita China and Tito Dennis took turns telling us about how, in his excitement and perhaps nervousness, Moks slid down their driveway while carrying the plate of crabs (good thing Tita China packed it nicely!), Moks loaded all the food in Hagibis (the car) and then left the door open while a stray dog lurked nearby, and how Moks, while sitting on the really terrible traffic on our way to our house, wanted to call his cousin to ask him to drive him in his motorbike to our house because they were already late. I guess I myself was pretty nervous that I didn’t notice that during all this time, Moks looked white (or at least that’s what Tita Raquel and Tito Dennis said) and that he could not stop sweating.
The evening turned out to be really fun. Tito Addit’s PR and socializing skills left me baffled as to how Moks turned out to be the way he is. Tita China’s ever-reliable cooking talent wowed all of us, my nanay included. And the fact that Moks’s lola from Quezon was there too made the night extra-eventful.
And oh yeah, Tito Addit surprised everyone other than himself when he asked my parents if they would allow me to spend the Halloween weekend in Quezon with them. And it was a testimony to my parents' grace under pressure that they did not fall off their seats.
