Recently, my grandfather passed away, and Gerard and I flew out to a completely different part of the country to attend the funeral. The trip meant an introduction to over a dozen of my relatives that he has never met (or even much heard about) during our couple of years together. Before we left for the trip, I wrote the following few paragraphs:
I didn't know my grandfather very well, so the trip isn't emotional. It will be interesting to introduce Gerard to members of my family that are more distant. As far as I'm concerned, he's already met all of my family members and friends that have a very important place in my heart. But on this trip he will meet enough people to fill in the blanks on the Aurelia family tree. And something about that feels potentially interesting, like I'm letting him peek into a back corner of my closet.
I wasn't socialized to behave like this branch of my family-- in fact, I'm very different from them. That's part of why none of them really fall under the VIP category of friends and relatives. Even when I was a child, it was hard to relate to their different way of doing things and their different way of understanding the world. I could tell that they didn't "get" me or the values that my parents instilled in me.
Here's just a few examples: I was taught to value a kind of uptight dignity, and this part of my family is always silly and teasing. I was taught to eat healthy foods and carefully watch my appearance, and this part of my family always dresses sloppy and eats terribly. Consequently, every last one of them is significantly overweight, unhappy about it, and yet also not willing to do anything to change it. I was taught to appreciate art and culture and all the new things that there are to learn about the world, and this part of my family doesn't care about much beyond NASCAR and the birds that are stopping at the bird feeder. Being around them is sort of surreal. And since Gerard shares all of my values that I listed above and he's more rigid than I am in general, I'm a little nervous about the introductions.
And now we're home again, with the trip behind us, and I can report that I had nothing to be nervous about. The thing is, even though my family members are strangely unlike me in a lot of ways, the main thing that Gerard noticed about them is that they are all "soooo nice." And though I initially neglected to mention it, it's true.
Gerard sat with my grandmother for hours and asked her questions about my grandfather and their life together, essentially taking a kind of history. She was absolutely thrilled to have his attention all that time, and he was genuinely interested in hearing her tales. He took in information about my grandfather, and watched the slideshow of photographs from his younger years, his courtship with my grandmother, and the development of his family. My cousins gathered around Gerard, charmed by his wide-eyed enthusiasm and interest in them and all things unknown to him. And my immediate family, who of course has known Gerard for years now, treated him like one of their own, like part of our special clan.
So, the introduction to distant family members was nothing but positive. They will all remember Gerard and seek him out at future family events-- I have no doubt about it. And he will get to know them more too. Introducing him to my weirdo family members did nothing other than make Gerard feel even more like he is my family.