Consider It A Date
Caption (above) Should have captured a picture of our families together, there’s always next time!
Man it’s been a while folks. Sorry for the lateness on this post. This was partially written before the holidays so what you’re about to read was what I was thinking prior to the Thanksgiving holiday. However, I’m updating to what happened during the holiday and beyond. Thank you kindly!
My boyfriend: “When will your parents ever meet my parents?”
Dun dun dunnnn..
Me: “Um I don’t know?”
This was just the surface of the argument that my boyfriend and I had over when our parents would finally meet each other about a week ago.
Yikes! This has been a question my boyfriend and I have been discussing for years now! When will they meet? I mean God we’ve been together for years and we still haven’t gotten our parents together to meet, not even once. This is something I am personally struggling with, not my boyfriend. He’s the who has been itching and pushing me to get our parents to meet, and every time a holiday comes around his parents always ask for my parents to come over to their house, yet I hold back.
So why is it that our parents have not met? I mean his parents like me and my parents like my boyfriend.
Well my biggest concern, even though it shouldn’t be, is that our families come from two different backgrounds and speak different languages; therefore, won’t be able to communicate with each other comfortably. I’m honestly nervous that since his parents have heavy accents when they speak English and my dad has a heavy accent when he speaks English on top of my mom who barely knows any English! It would be one confusing, awkward mess. I seriously picture my boyfriend’s dad telling my dad something and my dad will be like “who?” and then I’ll be sitting there trying to explain what the other said.
There are even more deeper reasons for my concerns. When you invite a family into your home where they are unfamiliar with your customs and ways of doing things, people will look at you differently or won’t understand. There’s a level of respect that is expected and I’m afraid that something will be misconstrued and everything will be awkward and they won’t want to see each other again for a long time. To put it shortly, it’s a big deal to bring another culture into your home. I mean you don’t do this unless you’re serious because having parents meet is like the next step closer to marriage. Yes, it gets that serious folks.
So a few days ago I came home to visit my parents with my boyfriend. He has not seen my parents in a while since he’s usually busy working or working on side video projects. We settled in the kitchen and made casual conversation. Then somehow my dad brought up the subject that Thanksgiving is coming up. He then approached the subject of his parents coming to our house to have Thanksgiving dinner. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My dad extended an invitation and my boyfriend accepted.
My dad is the type of man who has to do things formally, so when I told him that we were invited to my boyfriend’s parents house for Thanksgiving, he had to make sure his parents were the ones inviting him and not my boyfriend, because in his words, translated from Vietnamese to English “it’s supposed to be like that, I can’t just go to someone’s house uninvited, you can’t just do it any which way, that’s how we do things.” ..I had to ask my boyfriend to ask his parents to see if they would like to invite my parents over, which of course they said yes. Then my boyfriend had to come over to my parents house to extend the invitation on behalf of his parents.
Fast forward to Thanksgiving dinner. This was the moment of truth. Will they be able to understand each other? My parents arrived at my boyfriend’s parents house and my parents (mainly my dad) talked with my boyfriend’s mom, who was the talker in their family. I stood there on my tip toes with every word they exchanged, monitoring what the other said so that I could be there if one didn’t understand the other. There were some instances where my mom would have to ask my dad to translate in English or I would explain in more detail what the other party meant. When my boyfriend’s dad came out, that really got me on my toes since his dad’s accents is extremely heavy, plus he’s not a huge talker like my mom. Luckily and with a sigh of relief, my dad and his dad were able to have a conversation without saying “huh” or me having to re-explain too much. And even while we ate, I was a little nervous – I wasn’t able to enjoy the delicious food completely because I was sitting there making sure I was in the loop about what was being said.
The moment that I believe really got my parents and his parents on the same level was when my dad re-told his story of how he escaped Vietnam after the fallout of The Vietnam War. I mean even I got chills listening to him and I heard it before a few times, but not like how he told everyone at the dinner table. He said it with much more vigor and more detail and if I had time, I would go in more detail. If you want me to interview him, I can. Just let me know đ But anyhoo, after that we had dessert and everyone got to enjoy my “infamous and highly requested” cheesecake and my parents left for the night.
But it didn’t end there. You know something had to go wrong, right? Well, something didn’t go wrong, but it was something I never thought would be a troublesome factor. My boyfriend’s mom invited a friend, well more of an associate whom she met not too long ago since she was visiting from Honduras. Her English is perfect and she was very loud and outgoing. Well, she decides to bid my parents a farewell by bowing (Japanese-style or Thailand-style, whichever ethnicity you associate with bowing). But newsflash woman, A) it’s disrespectful to assume that all Asians bow, B) Vietnamese people don’t bow, and C) that’s plain ignorant. Now my parents and I being nice people, my dad corrected her and said that Thailand people did that and I told her that Japanese people do that as well, but her being the ignorant person she was kept doing it! Saying she didn’t know who did it and was laughing. Then she kept going on further by saying “Sayonara” before exiting the door. I corrected her yet again telling her that it was definitely Japanese. I couldn’t believe my eyes and ears. I cringed and hoped my dad did not take offense to her ignorance. My dad left graciously and invited his parents over for Christmas dinner (eep!!)
After my parents and the kooky lady left, my boyfriend’s sister took me to the side and told me she couldn’t believe what she said. She hoped my dad was not offended. I told her it was fine and that she was crazy. His mom especially was mad and said she apologized for her ignorance.
The night ended on a good note, minus the slight racial flop.
Fast forward to my current thoughts:
I would say that my fear has been conquered, or at least minimized. I do believe that it will get better over time, as my parents and his parents get together on other occasions – sans the crazy lady – and be able to further their relationship.
Well that’s all I have for now. I’ll definitely keep you guys posted on how this pans out in my multi-cultural world – a little inside joke since my boyfriend’s sister dates a white guy and I’m dating my boyfriend, we’re going to have a double multi-cultural wedding…haha.
Happy Holidays everyone!
Thought you would find interesting!
Kentucky church bans interracial marriage
A small Kentucky church has chosen to ban marriages and even some worship services for interracial couples. The Gulnare Freewill Baptist Church, located in Pike County, made the vote in response to a longtime member who is engaged to a man whose birthplace is in Zimbabwe.
Other pastoral leaders in the area were quick to denounce the church’s vote. “It’s not the spirit of the community in any way, shape or form,” Randy Johnson, president of the Pike County Ministerial Association, told the Lexington Herald-Leader.
The small congregation, which usually hosts about 40 members each Sunday, held the vote after longtime member Stella Harville, brought her fiancĂ© Ticha Chikuni to church with her in June. The couple performed a song together at the church in which Chikuni sang “I Surrender All,” while Harville played the piano.
Chikuni, 29, who works at Georgetown College, is black–and Harville, who was baptized at the church but is not an active member, is white. Dean Harville, Stella’s father, said he was told by the church’s former pastor Melvin Thompson that his daughter and her fiancĂ© were not allowed to sing at the church again. However, Thompson recently stepped down and the church’s new pastor, Stacy Stepp, said the couple was once again welcome to sing.
Stepp’s decision prompted Thompson to put forth a recommendation saying that while all members are welcome at the church, it does not “condone” interracial marriage, and that any interracial couples would not be received as members or allowed to participate in worship services. The only exception? Funerals.
The Harville family has formally requested the congregation to reconsider the interracial ban, and Thompson has also said he would like to resolve the issue, the area CBS affiliate WYMT has reported.
A copy of the recommendation, obtained by WYMT, reads in part:
That the Gulnare Freewill Baptist Church does not condone interracial marriage. Parties of such marriages will not be received as members, nor will they be used in worship services and other church functions, with the exception being funerals. All are welcome to our public worship services. This recommendation is not intended to judge the salvation of anyone, but is intended to promote greater unity among the church body and the community we serve.
Members of the church held a vote on Thompson’s proposed language, with nine voting in favor and six voting against. The other members in attendance chose not to vote.
Gawker notes that Pike County is 98 percent white and home to the infamous Hatfield-McCoy feud.
The Harville family doesn’t see Gulnare’s new policy promoting anything like unity or civil peace. “They’re the people who are supposed to comfort me in times like these,” Stella Harville said.
And Stella’s father was much more forceful in his denunciation of the interracial ban. “It sure ain’t Christian,” Dean Harville said. “It ain’t nothing but the old devil working.”
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/kentucky-church-bans-interracial-marriage-150009470.html
Great read, Jaymie. Such a shame people still deny interracial marriages within the church. They can’t define what isn’t Christian themselves if they hate or shun others from their church, not very Christian-like.
It’s not the first time I’ve heard of the church denying acceptance of interracial unions, or anything that comes from it. My friend’s aunt wanted her children baptized at our local Vietnamese church – they were bi-racial – Vietnamese and Black. It was said she couldn’t have them baptized because she had them out of wedlock, but her sister who also had children (fully Vietnamese) out of wedlock was able to have them baptized. There could have been a lot of factors as to why the priest decided not to baptize the bi-racial kids, but many of them point to them not being fully Asian. I’m not saying that churches are racist, but I do think it is wrong to turn away members within the church because of who they decide to partner with, or even have children with.