The first time I introduced my girlfriend to my parents, I was pretty unsure how they’d react to each other.

Introducing my Dad

I took my girlfriend Grace to my Dad’s place to introduce him to her. Dad lived in a tiny private room on the second floor of Carleton Lodge, a care home on Canada Way in Burnaby. It was a small private facility; modern, clean, quiet, and safe. Grace and I walked silently down the yellow vinyl hallway to Dad’s room. He was in room number 222 (like the painkiller).

Dad’s door was always wide open. By this time, it had been a few years since his heart attack in 1983, and his sense of privacy seemed to have completely transformed. His heart attack, muliple strokes, and the months of hospitalization, therapy, and regular “poking and prodding” (as he called the care received in hospital) must have eroded his ego. Or, perhaps he felt relaxed and safe. It could have been that he just enjoyed the extra breeze coming in from the open door.

Maybe it was because he wasn’t paying for the heat. This was the same man who, if our front door was left open for ten seconds too long, would bark out from his armchair “Close the door! I’m not paying to heat the whole neighbourhood”. Yeah, he didn’t have to care about that any more.

As we came through his door, Dad’s face lit up. I introduced him to Grace, who smiled sheepishly as he regarded her from his wheelchair with an amused expression. I could feel Grace’s fear, and it actually made me feel nervous too!

Fear of acceptance from my relatives would always seem like a form of Kryptonite for my poor Grace. My normally outgoing and friendly girlfriend just stood there in front of my Dad, turning all shades of pink. I waded into the uncomfortable silence by telling the story of how we’d met in the cafeteria of Emily Carr College, across the cash register whenever I’d buy my morning tea. (I still love remembering those moments.)

As Grace smiled at him nervously, Dad waited for me to finish speaking, and then looked at her and asked “Does she talk?” That broke the ice. Grace blushed one extra-pink blush and said yes. That might have been the first time my confident Grace had ever shown any shyness or self-consciousness around my elders. I guess parents were in a different category for her.

Afterwards in private, Dad told me that she seemed to have nice teeth, which was pretty high praise coming from him. I’d been worried that he might not approve of her because she wasn’t white and waspy, but he really seemed to like her. My Dad had a history of making racist comments – mostly about east indians, and usually from the relative safety of our car. He’d never said anything derogatory to our landlord, Mr. Basheer Bhaloo, an Indian man who to my young eyes, seemed like a nice guy.

I guess I’d been worried about some kind of anti-Asian racism coming from Dad, but there wasn’t a bit of that. It seemed like he didn’t care a whit that Grace was Filipina. However, when I told him that she was a Catholic, he kind of snorted and turned his head away for a moment. Dad never did trust organized religion, particularly Catholicism.

Introducing my Mum

Introducing Grace to my mother Angela was a whole different situation altogether. I figured that it wouldn’t be a matter of my mother accepting my girlfriend, but quite the reverse: I really did not know how Grace would react when she saw my mother for the first time. Our visit would be up at Riverview Hospital in Port Coquitlam, where Mum was in long-term care in a building known as the North Lawn Unit.

I was nervous all the way out during the drive, but we made our way into the building and down the shiny linoleum hallway where I’d always knock on a large door with a small 12 inch wide window in it. There’d be the disturbingly loud click of a brass key turning the lock, and a care aide in blue or purple togs would admit us after I said my mother’s name. By the time of this visit, I was about 20 and had been visiting my mother in hospitals, care homes, or locked wards since I was 11 or 12. Even after all those years, it never became natural to me, and I wasn’t sure if Grace would feel scared or uncomfortable.

I think that maybe none of my friends had ever met my mother before. Maybe, as we grew up, a couple of kids or one parent might have seen her once, but Angela sightings were very rare in my neighbourhood.

Mum had been in Riverview for about six years at that point. She was very skinny, almost skin and bones. She sat in a wheelchair compulsively rocking, her stiff arms tremoring from what I guessed were side-effects of anti-depressant meds. She sat silently, and didn’t seem to acknowledge our arrival at all.

I introduced myself first (never feeling certain if she’d remember me as her son), and then I introduced Grace, and watched for a reaction. Mum’s eyes moved to me briefly, and then over to Grace. Grace said “It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Love”. Mum stared towards the floor and kept rocking in her chair.

Mum had begun sliding down in her seat, with the cloth restraint that had been across her lap riding up towards her stomach. Grace asked her “Would you like to sit up a little higher?” Mum said yes. I was surprised to watch Grace get up, put her arms carefully under Mum’s armpits, gently shift her up in her seat, and re-adjust her sweater over her shoulders. For me, fear and uncertainty were the signals I’d learned about my Mother in this state, so I’d never been “hands-on” with her. But come to think of it, my Mum had never been very hands-on with me and my sister either. Once we grew out of babyhood, there seemed to be no cuddles – just some hand-holding if we walked somewhere out in public with her.

In contrast, Grace had no hesitation, and posessed actual hands-on life skills. I learned that in the past year, she’d worked in a group home with mentally handicapped adults, and for many years before that she’d been very involved in her own mother’s care at home. Grace’s mother had been bedridden for years after a severe stroke, so Grace had already learned how to help her mother turn in bed, or how to transfer her in and out of bed for toileting or washing.

With a successful first contact established, it was time to give Mum her favorite gift, a milk chocolate bar. With the self-abandon and toothlessness of a toddler, Mum took too-big bites out of her favourite treat while we tried to catch whatever she spilled or spat out into a large bib. It was a messy, but successful visit. Grace had finally met my Mum.

Afterwards, as we returned ouside to the parking lot, I looked out on our view from the top of the hill. Riverview’s spacious green lawns and flowering old trees stretched out in front of us. They were beautiful and intended to inspire peace of mind, but the view stood in stark contrast to the locked doors and steel window screens on the building behind us. Even though my Mother would be stuck in Riverview Hospital for the rest of her life, I had to remember to appreciate my own liberty, mental health, and freedom of choice.