The Elephant In The Room

The moment I knew I was in love with Mr. International was when he lifted my mother and grandmother into an elephant’s trunk. Absurd intro, I know. Just wait.

It was barely a month after we met—if even that—when my mother and grandmother came to visit me in Spain. I hadn’t even had proper time to figure him out, and there he was, about to meet two generations of my family. But I thought, if there’s ever a time, it’s literally just now.

He saw my mother for the first time from the audience at my March dance performance. I was trapped backstage, unable to stage-manage their meeting. Out of a quiet desire to make it special—or maybe just his natural patience—Mr. International waited for the perfect moment for their official introduction. And honestly, I can’t even remember exactly how it happened, because once it did, it was effortless. As if they’d all known each other forever.

At that point, he had been learning English for exactly one month since we met that night in early February. Yet somehow, he dove headfirst into a karaoke night with my family and all my school friends, who had practically sold out the show.

It’s strange, because you’d think I’d carry some apprehension. But when my friends snapped photos and videos of us, marveling at how brightly he let me shine, I reveled in the love. When my grandmother leaned over and said, “His energy is amazing,” I was ready to marry him on the spot. Come on—it’s Grandma.

The other night, we were watching Modern Family. Instead of cartoons, I grew up on Modern Family, which probably explains a lot. It was also his pandemic show, so in a way, his English was practically built on it. Now it’s ours.

That episode was about whether love strikes in an instant or grows over time. By the end, all the couples assumed they’d fallen in love at the same pace, only to discover it took one of them a day, the other four months.

I thought about us. If you asked my friends, they’d say I was instantly in love, based on my two-part minute-by-minute breakdown of meeting Mr. International over brunch the morning after. These new friends of barely a month cried for me—they could feel how monumental it was. They felt the love.

But looking back, it wasn’t realizing I was in love that mattered most. It was realizing I could be safe to feel love.

When I met my man, he radiated a kind of love that I instantly knew wouldn’t take, dim, or wound me—it would simply love.

So back to March. For the rest of the weekend that my grandmother and mother were in town, Mr. International planned surprise adventures across the city: labyrinths, fountains, and then a park with an enormous elephant statue.

Walking through that park, the family tensions I’d quietly feared would unravel did exactly that. You know the kind—travel fatigue hits, little irritations start to rise, old patterns flare. My breath slowed, my pulse quickened, and just as I tried to think of how to patch things up, he gave it space, softened it, and transformed it completely.

He shot me a look that said, everything hard in life can be made easy through love, winked, and pointed to the elephant. Then, completely deadpan, he told my mom and grandma that there’s an ancient Spanish legend: it’s good luck for a lifetime to sit in the elephant’s trunk. Total bullshit. But they believed it.

Before I could blink, he was effortlessly lifting my mother into the trunk. Her laughter—easy, uncontrollable—was a sound I hadn’t heard in ages. Then my grandmother was next. She still posts those videos on Facebook. I recorded it all, hands shaking, desperate never to forget the moment.

That day, I learned that with true, unconditional love, conflict can become a space of laughter, lightness, growth, and transformation.

And when my heart began to beat anew, it was full—overflowing with a love so big, it carried not a trace of fear.

Since that day, this unimaginable feeling has only grown deeper. Every single day.

While in Spain, Mr. International has met my best friends, my new friends, my mother, grandmother, and father. Some for a week, some just a night. And with each one, he loved them with an inexplicable ease, as if he instinctively understood that to love every part of me means to love all who made me.

And wow—is he good at addressing elephants in the room.