My younger brother, Ethan, who's 23, got a girlfriend, Maya, who's 22, in January after New Years. He met her at their university in the biology department, she's majoring in marine biology and he's doing general biology. They'd been talking for a while before SHE asked him out and they began dating. I've met Maya once or twice briefly since I sometimes get asked by Ethan to get him lunch since my work's close. She's a very shy, sweet girl. Last week on saturday we had an end of the week dinner, where Ethan invited Maya for the first time. Our family has a tradition where we invite our partners to dinner only if we're serious, and whenever we do, the whole family has to being a reasonably decent welcome gift for the new member. We did it with my husband and my oldest brother, Isaac's wife. Apparently it started on my father's side.
Anyway, after we had dinner and sat on the couch, it was time for gifts. Everyone gave their gifts and I could tell that she was getting a bit emotional and I summed it up to her just not being used to it. My turn came and I gave her a royal-ish blue scarf I'd made with a hand embroidered dolphin on the end of it. Maya stared at it for a solid five minutes then started crying. Like completely sobbing. I began apologizing and asking if I did something wrong while my mom got her water and my brother comforted her. After a bit, she calmed down and said it was okay and that I did nothing wrong, but she left a bit early from dinner with Ethan. I was truly like so confused on what I did that yesterday I called Ethan and asked what was wrong. He told me her father died three years ago from cancer and that he, who was also a marine biologist (the reason she wanted to become a marine biologist) used to call her dolly / dolphin because it was her favorite animal growing up and still is, and that his favorite color was also coincidentally, blue. Maya had been depressed ever since his death and she was so emotional that she ended up crying really bad that night because she loved the scarf.
Maya wanted Ethan to tell me that she didn't dislike me or anything of the sort and Ethan also thanked me because the morning after, she was grinning all day with the scarf on which hadn't happened in the year that he'd known her.