Chapter 50 Yazmin
Yazmin and my Mom Maryanne were roommates and best friends during their college years. Marriage, children and careers had conspired for them to lose touch with each other. It was funny that they had found each other again at a lingerie party thrown by a woman that was a mutual acquaintance. The two widows were now inseparable.
Yazmin was deaf but she could read lips perfectly. I loved watching baseball games with her because she would tell me what the players were saying. She was also an exceptionally beautiful woman of Lebanese descent that could lip read four different languages.
On normal stuff we just made sure she could see our lips when we talked. All of us both signed and spoke the more important stuff.
Meeting her made it obvious to me why Mom insisted I learn sign language as I grew up. It had become a useful skill more than once and now it was a very necessary skill.
My brother had asked Yazmin's younger daughter Soraya to marry him and we had all convened at her house on Thanksgiving day to make preliminary plans for their wedding. The basic plan was agreed to and the only people left in the house were Mom, Yazmin, her oldest daughter Arianne, and me.
Yazmin's daughter Arianne and I had been secretive in our love affair and even though it had been in progress for over a year our families saw it only as a close friendship. At the time of our combined families Thanksgiving dinner we had been living together for a month.
We both hated to be in the spotlight, we were speechless when an occasion required a speech. We had an announcement to make to all of them during dinner but could not force it out.
Late that afternoon we were in the kitchen drinking coffee. Mom was the only chatterbox in the group but she was content with the company and the coffee, Arianne and I were as silent as we normally were.
I stood and asked Arianne to dance with me. She graciously accepted and we were soon slow dancing in the kitchen. Our Mom's were stunned by our dance; Mom more so since she knew there was no music. I turned Arianne's back to her mother so Yazmin could see my lips.
"Do you think we should tell them?" I asked Arianne. I saw Yazmin sign what I had said to Mom.
Arianne turned us to face her mother and whispered, "No. Lets see how long it takes them to figure it out."
Another half turn and I said "Would serve them right if they never knew."
Arianne said, "You are right. Lets let them stew on it."
I said, "Snoopy old broads anyway."
Arianne and I were pelted with dinner rolls but we continued our dance.
Arianne whispered, "I love you."
When it was my turn to face our Mom's Yazmin had a stunned expression on her face and Mom was slapping her hands to get her to sign what her daughter had said to me.
