JMW MEETS THE H…Ds (editors note: and boy was he underwhelmed)

Let’s go back to September 2011.  At this time, I was living in a town called O’Fallon in Illinois. It’s a smallish town about 16 miles east of the Illinois-Missouri border and the city of St. Louis.  Veronica and I had been dating for nearly 1-1/2 years and had decided to move in together.  It was a pretty exciting time.  We had been maintaining a long-distance relationship and some of that was a LOOONG distance.  She had been sent overseas for work a couple of times (The Netherlands, UK), not to mention the distance from Houston to O’Fallon.

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But I digress.  This story is about the first time I made the trip to Vancouver Island to finally meet Veronica’s family.  There we were, September, and I am excited to make the trip. I hear how beautiful it is, how nice the weather is, and I am pumped.  We had talked about me meeting her family for some time and to be honest I was really excited, and it was long overdue.  Excited but nervous.  Veronica had told me about her family’s world travels, her mother being originally from Peru, her father’s former high standing in various companies including the one I worked for at that time, and her sister who had just moved back to Canada somewhat recently from living abroad in Scotland.  It was kind of overwhelming to think about.  What am I going to say to these folks?  I am just a normal guy from the Midwest of the US from a tiny little town in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  How can my life or experiences compare to all this world travel, the exoticness, the excitement?

Let’s back up a little bit to frame the story. When Veronica and I had talked about meeting her family before, she had told me multiple times “You are probably going to have to cut your hair”.  Wait, hold on a minute why would I need to cut my hair?!?!  “Well, my father is a serious no-nonsense guy, so yeah I think you should.”  I mean I understand about making a good impression, but I think I can do it with long hair, right?  So, we talked about it, and I settled on not cutting my hair… if they don’t like it so be it. (Well, that is the façade I put up anyway! I was a little nervous, but I decided to go forward knowing Veronica, and the type of people it would take to raise such a good person as her wouldn’t care about someone having long hair.  Luckily, I was correct.)

So here we are, it’s September and Veronica and I had flown from St. Louis to Seattle and are awaiting our flight to Vancouver to meet my mother and then catch our puddle jumper to the island.  I hadn’t seen my mom in a while, she hadn’t met Veronica yet, and we decided why doesn’t she come along to Canada?  It was a great idea and turned out to be a fantastic trip.  There we were sitting at a bar, having a drink, having fun talking about all the comings and goings and out of the blue Veronica looks at me with one of those looks, over the tip of her nose and less than impressed (I know all you family members know that look).  “I can’t believe you didn’t shave! You are going to meet my parents for the first time!!”  I’ve told you about the long hair situation, and honestly, I think to myself… CRAP!  I keep cool and say, “Why would I shave, I’m on vacation!  My mom wouldn’t even expect me to shave so I’m sure your parents won’t mind!  (If you look at the pictures I have attached, the photo of me is taken by Veronica sitting at the bar in the Seattle Airport…Not Bad Right?!?!  Honestly, I did think about buying a razor and shaving cream from a store but decided against it eventually).  So, we finished our drinks, boarded our plane to Vancouver, and prepared to meet my mom.

We had cleared Canadian customs and were walking towards the terminal that would take us to the island, when Veronica came up with this brilliant little joke.  Keep in mind no one from either of our families had seen us in some time, Veronica and I are living together and had been dating and very serious for well over a year now, and my mother had never met Veronica.  Veronica took her sweatshirt and put it under her shirt and formed it just right to make it look like she was 5-6 months pregnant.  It actually looked convincing.  So, there were walking along “baby” in tow and we enter the terminal to see my mother.  She sees us smiles and waves and is all excited saying hello wanting hugs and awaiting from a distance when her jaw DROPS.  She is saying no way and smiling/laughing in disbelief (we had her fooled).  This doesn’t last long, but long enough for old Sherbear (Sheri) to fall for it and then Ronnie took out the sweatshirt and we told her we were just kidding.  It was a great icebreaker, and those of you that know Veronica know that she is a bit of a practical joker.  We got through the introductions, the hugs, the initial chit chat, and start talking about our next flight over when all of a sudden my mom stops and looks at me, not much unlike how Veronica did at the Seattle Airport, but only the way a mother can and says, “Jered Michael, you didn’t shave?!?! Oh my gosh, why wouldn’t you shave?!?!”  You can imagine how the conversation between my mother and Veronica went after that, they were completely on the same page.

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OK, now my family and Veronica have met, and it’s my turn to meet her family.  We got on the puddle jumper and headed for Courtenay, I’ve been reminded about my inadequate personal hygeine twice, and we are about to meet the Healds for the first time.  Veronica decided to try and play the same joke on her family as she did on my mom and got her baby bump all situated and looking good before we hopped off the plane.  As we walked into the terminal, I saw Veronica waving, and I looked over to see her family of which I had seen a few photos, so I recognized them.  I saw Lilia and Angela smiling and waving and obviously excited to see Veronica, exactly as you would expect from a mother and sister.  Then I looked over and saw ol’ Jimbo.  Instantly I started to regret my decision not to shave.  This man looked all business, no fooling around. He’s tall, wearing slacks and a golf shirt tucked in, and for those of you who know Jim, the top button was of course buttoned.  All I could think is, this is going to be a long 10 days, he looks like a SERIOUS tight ass.

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Well, we made the introductions and to say the least Veronica’s family was not fooled in the slightest by her baby belly. They all said frankly, “you would have been complaining about that months ago, there is no way you could have kept it hidden that long”! We continued the introductions, loaded up the car and headed to Casa de Heald.  We settled in and were chit chatting the way you do when you first meet new people when Jim comes by and says, “Hey man, you want to grab a beer?”  Do I want to grab a beer?  Does the Pope poop on a golden throne?!  So we made our way to his bar in the basement via a tour of their home, and we cracked the first ones.  I didn’t know much about Canadian beer at the time, but apparently Jim did his homework because of the Canadian beers I knew, they had my favorite one, Kokanee!  We had started off on a good foot here. I was still a little unsure about how well Jim and I were going to get along, but it was moving in the right direction.  So after we talked a bit he said “grab another beer and lets go check out the garage”.  This is code, but I will leave that for another story.  We went outside with our beers in tow and started talking about work, projects, stories and places, and background etc.  If you know Jim, he has no shortage of stories, and he is quite the good story-teller.  During our BSing session I started to think, “maybe this won’t be so bad, I think we have a little more in common than I had originally thought!”

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From there on the trip was amazing. We ate, we drank, we sightseed, we had a blast.  We went golfing, as a group we did some hiking at Mt. Washington, went whale watching, salmon fishing, had a visit paid from Veronica’s Tia Gladys (during that part of the trip Lilia and Gladys cooked us a smorgesboard of Peruvian Food, my first exposure to authentic Peruvian food… it’s delicious btw!), played cards, played games, made a trip to Vancouver for Veronica’s birthday and had an all in fantastic trip.  It was so much fun and a great introduction to my future family.  Now before I finish out my post (I know I am getting quite long winded here) I am going to talk about one other moment which stands out in my mind.

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I like to cook, I always have, and as it turns out so does Jim.  He, along with everyone in this family are very good cooks for anyone who isn’t already aware.  On this trip, which has become a constant so many years later, I became Jim’s sous-chef whenever he was making dinner.  On this particular night Jim had setup the rotisserie on his grill, and he had said “we are making roasted chickens!”.  We clean the chickens, get them onto the spit and load them into the grill.  Once that gets going we started on the sauces. Jim tells me we are going to leave one plain, one we are going to baste with hot sauce, and the third I believe was some sort of honey mustard.  We got these going, have a few beers in the process and kill some time until it’s time to eat.  Fast forward to dinner: the table is set, the sides are out, and we are ready to pull the deliciously cooked rotisserie chickens off the grill and bring them to the table for dinner.  We setup on the counter and pull the chickens off the spit onto large serving platters and Jim tells me to go and sit down and he will bring the chickens over.  We are waiting around the table when all of a sudden, Jim says, “heads up!”. I move out of the way to allow him to bring the chickens over and he asks which I am going to have.  “I think I’m gonna start with some of the hot-sauce basted chicken”. “Perfect!”, he says… A few seconds later I have a whole chicken on the plate in front of me, and just so you know, the intent was not for me to carve a piece off and pass it around, the entire chicken was for me!!!!  I’ve got to be honest, I didn’t know what to do!  It seemed no one at the table except my Mom and I were surprised!!!!  So as they say, “when in Rome”. I went for it and finished that chicken all the way down to the bone.  There was nothing left when I was done.  I’m not certain but I think it was a test of my manhood, and I like to think I passed with flying colors! 

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This was my first of many trips to the island over the years, and one of my fondest memories of my new family, and in addition to my own, I couldn’t ask for a better family.  Over the years I have continued to love my trips to the island with my beautiful, loving wife Veronica and the Heald family has treated me as one of their own.  Jim, Lilia, Angela, Dean, Amy, Emma, and Ben have all welcomed me everytime I have come and treated me as though I was born a Heald.  It’s been a fantastic time and I look forward to visting constantly.  We like it so much that Veronica, my brother Jesse and I have purchased property on the island with some significant research and time put in by Jim. We plan to someday (sooner than later hopefully) build something on it so we can spend as much time as we can in the magical place that is Vanouver Island.  I would like to say thanks to all of the Healds for welcoming me to your family and treating me as one of your own over the years.