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A time. A family. It was the 90s, and I was twenty.

I remember feeling nervous and afraid - a mother who had pointy ice-pick eyes, even when she smiled, and who often wasn't smiling for or at me.
I remember the smell of moth balls from a Chinese grandmother who also never smiled at me even MORE than the mother never smiled at me. She scowled and said ugly things about me in jagged syllables and shrieks that she thought I couldnt understand. I could not understand her Cantonese, perhaps, but I understood her cutting body langage, flickering looks of disdain, and the way she managed to pretend her hearing aid wasn't working when I tried to simply nod my head in a personal way toward her that intimated I was trying to communicate. The only person who made me feel welcome in that home was the dog, an overweight sheltie who also looked a bit confused most of the time, but never seemed to complain: he was fed exotic Asian cuisine under the table and patted with spiny fingers often enough to make do.

I was there because a boy of twenty was in love with me and wanted me there. For hours, I would sit around and be the only Not-Chinese person on the premises, and it is an understatement to say that this made me feel uncomfortable. I had never in my life been met with anything but warm hugs and welcoming invitations by most people's parents, but this home was a __________. Their terse, shrieking syllables intimidated me and even though the boy who loved me would always say "that's just how they talk in their language" I would shudder and watch the clock to see when it seemed late enough to politely finish the meal and get out of there.

It hadn't always been this way. I entered the situation thinking that because the boy loves me, his family will too. They will be excited to learn about me, the white American girl who has introduced their son to standard American living and they would find intrigue in my southern accent and love for pizza and hamburgers and the way my blond hair fell at my shoulders. I have no idea what land I was living in, to think such niave things, but I did. It didn't take long before three things happened: 1. I fell in love with the food they prepared -- mmm... better than any elegant Chinese restaurant could prepare, 2. I fell in love with the boy, and 3. sitting alone in the living room under the smoldering eyes of the Chinese matriarchs made me feel like I was going to wet my pants from nervousness.

Years passed. Little changed. Conversations that were already hard to have grew harder. It initially had been a worthy sacrifice because of the boy who loved me. But then with the passing of those years, my blond, white American mystique started to wear off, and gradually I became just as uneasy under his gaze as I had been with the family-women of his life. It seemed they wanted him to marry a woman like him, and I was different. I expected him to fight it, to raise his galliant hand in the air like a character from a novel and lash out to them that he LOVED me and would NOT conform to their rigid cultural expectations!

He did this for a little while.