My mother-in-law died on June 3. We first met in her Wallingford, Conn., kitchen the day after Christmas in 1987. This was a few years after her son Al, my partner (now husband) of 36 years, first disclosed to her that she had a gay son. She was accepting but drew the line at “never wanting to meet a man Al was with.” A daughter of Irish-Catholic immigrant parents, she found it too much in the mid-’80s to convey approval by welcoming someone like me into her home.
And yet, six months after Al and I met that summer in San Diego, here I was at her Wallingford kitchen table, sharing a meal of Al’s favorite scallops. She was aloof, yet not rejecting or mean. Over the next few years, I would discover that meanness was not in her character. She was conflicted, but she was not the kind of person to deflect her moral conflict via hostility toward me or her son. She loved Al too much for such things.
I never imagined I would have a “mother-in-law.” Such a thing was inconceivable for a gay male couple in those days. We were busy just trying not to be rejected.
