Meeting My Boyfriend’s Nice Jewish Mother

Seeing that I've been dating someone for a respectable amount of time now, and that things have been going rather well, it was recently decided that I should probably meet the other woman in his life – his mother.  It made sense because a few weeks ago I had convinced him that the 12-hour train ride to meet my Christian family in rural Pennsylvania was going to be fun.  And I even took it to be a good sign that he didn’t break up with me immediately upon returning to Brooklyn.  In fact, shortly thereafter he mentioned that his mother was coming to town and perhaps I should meet her.

I had met previous boyfriend’s parents before, but only once since I had decided to convert to Judaism.  I had been dating a wayward young man who had been raised in a strict Orthodox family.  My Conservative conversion was never going to be good enough for his family – which was clearly articulated to me through him prior to any actual familial introduction.  When I finally met that boyfriend's mother her first question was, “Well, are you going to miss Christmas?”  Yikes!  I will say that for all of the “you must break up with the shiksa” telephone conversations I occasionally overheard him have with his parents, his family was always kind or at least passably indifferent to my face.

Fortunately, in my current relationship, I was not aware of any prejudices against me arising from my Christian upbringing.  My boyfriend did say that his mother asked if our relationship was serious.  To which he responded, “No ma, it’s not serious, we tell jokes all the time.”

All joking aside, I do care about him a great deal, but who knows if years from now I will be looking back reminiscing about this weekend as the time I met my mother-in-law.  Truth be told we’ve only been together since Purim, so there was no sense in getting the cart before the horse.  But I was still nervous anyway about meeting his mother.

One of the ways I alleviate stress is by cooking, but since I’m without easy access to my own kitchen I resorted to my other nervous tic – cleaning.  My boyfriend really hates change and is not the meticulously neat and tidy (or crazy) person I am, so I knew I would have to trick him into my stress-reduction plan to clean his apartment.  When we talking out our weekend plans, I worked in trips to his place to pick up dirty laundry around trips to my place where I have laundry in my building.  I even snuck out early one morning to pick up bagels – and a new shower curtain.

When the appointed day arrived, my boyfriend found me scrubbing the bathroom floor wondering aloud if we should replace the shabby (and ugly) bathroom rugs. “No, my mom bought them for me,” which made me glad I hadn’t already pitched them out.  But we got her call earlier than we expected that she had landed and was on her way to get a cab.  I was still at his place nervously tidying up.  One of the first things she noticed was how clean the place was.  “This is not my son’s apartment,” she said eyeing the small vase of flowers in the bathroom.  I couldn’t tell if that was a good thing or a bad thing.  

The next night over dinner I again found myself nervous and talking up a storm.  But this was where we got it out in the open – my Christian family and my conversion.  To my relief she appeared rather curious about why anyone would choose to be Jewish, and what exactly was the process I was going through.  “Ah, you probably know more about Judaism than most Jews!” she declared.  Our only potential sticking point was our conflicting views on Israel (I recently took part in the New Israel Fund’s video Love, Hate and the Jewish State expressing opinions I would gather from our conversation she would disagree with) but I wisely kept my mouth shut.

So, as I hope my relationship with my boyfriend continues to grow, so will my relationship with his mother.  I find it such a relief that my family history does not appear at all problematic to her – and, in fact, she seems pleased her son has found a nice Jewish girl.