The first Christmas with your significant other’s family can be nerve-wracking. But what if you’re a gay couple, both from small towns?
Perry and Jason are both from where they call “the middle of nowhere” in South Dakota and Minnesota. They both put in their time in cities before deciding they wanted to come back to small towns.
Both were worried that coming and living in a small town would be difficult, but after the worry and the anxiety and the initial coming out it became “just kind of, you know, whatever,:
How their lives would be was made clearest during their first Christmas with Jason’s family. Perry remembers:
The Funniest thing though was the first Christmas at Jason’s mom’s house. She was passing out gifts and they go form youngest to oldest. And it was the youngest nephew who was two or three at the time, and then the niece, and then Jason, and then she’s standing in front of me with this box, and she’s like “I don’t have any idea where you fall in the order.” And I said well “I don’t either, but I’m really sure its not right here!” Cause they had no idea there was an age difference, well they knew, but they didn’t know what it was. (laugher) Perry: But yeah, she was kinda cute. She was just a hoot. And Jason’s Grandma. Grandma Beesons, has always, ever since the fist time she met me, she has addressed everything, every card to Jason, we get Christmas cards, Easter cards. I get the same Christmas gift as all the other in-laws and she’s eighty what? Eighty five.
Originally published at ImFromDriftwood.com. I’m From Driftwood envisions a world where every lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer person feels understood and accepted, and every straight person is an ally.
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