Little Squirrels Can Climb Tall Trees by Michael Murphy (namjoon book recommendations txt) 📕

The closer we got, the more nervous Kyle appeared to become. He was fidgeting constantly and just exuded nervousness. I was getting quite concerned, but in the final hour of the drive he seemed to calm down tremendously, and by the time we got there, you would never have known that he had been nervous.

As I knew they would, my family absolutely adored Kyle and showered him with welcome. True to his promise, my father gave Kyle a personal guided tour of the maple syrup production facility. Maybe calling it a “facility” was too much since it was all manual—no mechanization whatsoever was involved in the process, right down to the fact that they used wood to heat the pan that cooked the sap into syrup. The giant wooden paddles they used to keep the cooking sap moving so it didn’t burn were true antiques. My father proudly explained to Kyle, “My father used these here to do the same work. And his father before him as well.”

Later Kyle told me that he loved the tour, felt very comfortable with my family, was absolutely fascinated by the production process, and relished the opportunity to taste the homemade syrup on a hearty batch of my mother’s pancakes. The ingredients were so simple, but the meal made for one of the most satisfying he’d ever eaten. And no one left the table hungry.

The entire weekend was a wonderful experience. Kyle was absolutely blown away by the openness and honesty of the family. There were no secrets. There were no lies. We just lived our lives in front of one another. It was all so radically different than the world he had known when growing up. We held nothing back, even if it involved yelling.

I found out that when Kyle first heard yelling at the dinner table, he was convinced that Armageddon had arrived and the perfect family was self-destructing in front of him. He told me later that he was greatly relieved when he noticed that while we were all animated, no one seemed mad at one another, and that he eventually figured out that regardless of the emotion, positive or negative, we just lived it all in front of one another, openly and honestly. I think he began to see that there was just no way one could be closeted in this family.

One visit and Kyle was in love with my family. Which led him to do something that he had not planned on doing (or so he told me later, and I believe him). He hadn’t thought much about the subject and certainly hadn’t planned to bring it up during a family dinner. But during our final dinner together, it just hit him like a ton of bricks falling on him that this was the right thing to do. No, this was the only thing to do. He hadn’t rehearsed any words of wisdom. He just opened his mouth and let the moment guide him to do the right thing.

“Excuse me,” he politely said to get the floor. Everyone stopped talking and paid attention to Kyle. “I have a question for Joseph.” They were all quite surprised when Kyle got up out of his chair, knelt on one knee on the floor, and said, “Jo-Jo, my little squirrel, will you marry me?”

Lots of applause rose around the table, along with cheers and even a couple of squeals of delight. Kyle would normally have been terrified to ask such a personal question, not to mention asking it in front of others like this.

I was stunned. There is just no other way to describe how I felt. Stunned. We hadn’t talked about the idea at all even though his mother had brought the subject up during her visit to New York. I simply looked at Kyle for a moment in disbelief and then nodded. “Yes.” I didn’t need lots of time to consider my answer. There was only one answer, an emphatic yes!

Applause turned into cheers. We sort of threw ourselves at each other, hugged, and whispered, “I love you.”

When I had recovered my wits enough, I whispered in Kyle’s ear a question of my own. “So, was it worth all the trouble I put you through in the beginning?”

“I just asked you to marry me, didn’t I?”

“True. So is that a ‘yes’?”

“Yes! Yes! Yes! Do you think I ask all the guys I date to marry me?” Kyle joked.

“Well, you said you hadn’t done much dating….”

“You’re my first proposal. And my last, since I’m in this for the long haul.”

“Love ya, babe!”

Chapter 19

The next morning we drove back to New York City, where we spent one night at home before taking the subway to Newark Airport just across the river the following day. Thinking that flying first thing in the morning or last thing at night were probably not good things, I had booked us on a late-morning flight. It was midweek, which I also thought was probably better than trying to fly anywhere on a Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. I wanted Kyle’s first flight to be a good experience.

The entire airport experience was brand new for Kyle. It was still astonishing to me that my partner had never been in an airport or on an airplane. We both had packed light, so we only had carry-on baggage. Still, getting through security was the usual slow process. As we waited, I again wondered why people didn’t simply admit that profiling was a fact of life and that some people should have more screening than others and that many, many travelers were frequent flyers who were well-known to the airlines. But alas, the airlines only wanted to take my money and didn’t really care about my opinions.

Once we made it through security and had re-dressed, I led Kyle to our gate. Our timing was good, which gave us only about twenty minutes to wait before our flight was due to start boarding. Kyle was absolutely captivated