I've been thinking about the Boyfriend a lot lately. And not in the way you would expect an adoring girlfriend to be constantly thinking about her man. More specifically, I've been spending a lot of time with my family lately as my dad's little sister is in town and everytime we settle down to another meal or pass more cups of tea around, I try to imagine what it would be like to insert the Boyfriend into the picture. There would be my dad, his dad and his brother, all arguing about medicine (the price we have to pay to have a family full of doctors) or politics (both Pakistani and Singaporean) or religion (go figure) while the rest of us carry on our own polite conversations about what we've been up to since we last saw each other.

And lately, the more I've tried to think of it, the more I wonder whether or not he would fit in. I don't doubt that the family will eventually come to accept him as he is, but I wonder whether in the long run, he won't stop to resent my family gatherings where most conversations are not entirely in English and the topics discussed aren't easy to keep up with unless one really knows about them.

But then I think about Auntie A, the family friend who's always around at these family gatherings of ours. We've come to get used to her presence at these events, including her as one of the family even though she's not related to any of us either by blood or marriage. She's the Chinese lady who's been the nurse at my grandfather's clinic since before I was born. I've never been quite sure why she's still with us but I can't help but notice how she's always there, politely seated to the side, smiling even though she can't understand a word of that urdu joke someone just made.

Perhaps one day the Boyfriend will be seated politely next to her too. Or the family will just start telling jokes in English.