A Canadian cruise that screams ‘family’

It was a good run, but this was clearly the end for me. My heart raced, I experienced shortness of breath, light-headedness, and I thought I was going to faint. These were either symptoms of some terrible, mystery illness that had secretly festered in my body for years, or, more likely, the anxiety and panic I felt as I packed for a family cruise.

This may sound like a melodramatic reaction to a simple vacation, but please, hear me out. I was going to be on a boat with my partner, Alex, his parents, and my parents. Easy as lemon merengue pie, right? Well, no. The two sets of parents had never met. Also, Alex’s parents don’t speak English — they’re from Spain. My parents don’t speak Spanish — they’re from the Jell-O belt of north central Massachusetts.

Continue reading below

But there was no sign of the hurricane the next day when we boarded on a brilliantly sunny Saturday afternoon. Alex’s mother learned a sentence in English, and she greeted my mother with a warm hug and told her “We are family now.” My icy heart melted a tiny bit when I saw this; my mother managed a “Gracias, señora.” For the first time since the cruise was planned, I felt a glimmer of hope that this might not be the painful disaster I was anticipating.

In the early planning stages of the trip, friends asked, “Why are you doing this

Christopher Muther/ Globe Staff

Meet the parents (from left): Susan Muther, Vidal Gonzalez, Maria Gonzalez, Edmund Muther.

cruise?” Alex and I had very different agendas. My motivation was to go to strip clubs and gorge on poutine once we hit Montreal. Alex wanted our parents to meet and give them an opportunity to get away on a nice vacation. If you haven’t figured this out, Alex is the nice guy in our relationship.

I held my breath during dinner that first night on the ship. It was a “wilderness dinner” featuring “regional dishes inspired by woodsmen and fur trappers of yesteryear.” I don’t remember a thing about the evening except white knuckling my utensils and trying to facilitate some kind of conversation between the two sets of parents. Alex is bilingual and had no problem translating.

In the weeks leading up to the cruise, I tried brushing up on my Spanish through an iPhone app called Cat Spanish. You learn Spanish phrases by looking at pictures of cats. But the only phrase I could recall was “Yo quiero vomitar” (“I want to vomit”), which I could only use so many times before Alex’s parents would start to think I had an eating disorder. That was the first and last time I tried to learn Spanish from cats.

Regular cruisers know that there is a nightly show after dinner. To be polite, these shows were not exactly my cup of Long Island ice tea, but the silver lining to these song-and-dance clouds was that they kept our parents occupied and gave Alex a break from his job as translator.

Instead of buying daily onshore excursions through the ship, we planned our own off-the-boat fun. We rented a minivan or large SUV at each port, and the six of us piled in every morning to visit locations we mapped out. This gave us the freedom to cover more ground, travel at our own pace, and experience different restaurants rather than be bound to itineraries dictated by the ship. It may sound more expensive, but we ended up saving money and were able to see parts of Maine and Canada that we otherwise wouldn’t have.

We took every meal and excursion together as one, big, happy-but-unable-to-communicate family. Everyone took turns being overly polite and volunteering to sit in the third row of the van. Gradually an odd language began to emerge among our parents. My mother, Susan, and Alex’s mother, Maria, developed some sort of maternal, telepathic system of nodding and smiling.

Alex’s father, Vidal, could speak some English, albeit heavily accented and rather quietly. But he and my father, Ed, also started bonding. The language barrier became helpful when they tried to talk about politics.

The first stop for our boat, Holland America’s Maasdam
, was Bar Harbor. We made a beeline for Acadia National Park, driving up Cadillac Mountain with stops to walk around and enjoy the scenery. Our primary goal at these stops was to enjoy the natural landscape. The next day in Halifax we went to the ruggedly rocky Peggy’s Cove, and then drove to Lunenburg.

Christopher Muther/ Globe Staff

The Maasdam docked in Quebec City.

Lunenberg was one of my favorite excursions. A charming little fishing village filled with unique British architecture that has evolved into a tourist destination, it was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995.

The Maasdam, which holds approximately 1,200 passengers, had activities for those who chose to stay onboard. But I don’t think any of us were keen on programs called “Complimentary Footprint Analysis” and “How about a game of cribbage?” so we were glad for our stops. We alternated between dress-up and casual dinners. Every night my father scanned the menu for lobster, and complained if it wasn’t there. Alex’s father gave him a new name: Mister Lobster. There was light-hearted joking taking place and our parents started bonding as our ship made its way to Prince Edward Island. The knot in my stomach was slowly loosening.

I began to understand why people enjoy cruises as the week wore on. There are easy-to-follow patterns and rhythms. Every night after the show, we would descend upon the bar and listen to Jamm the Piano Man sing his way through the American songbook, or Elton John and Billy Joel. Soon, our waiter Edison didn’t need to ask what our drink order was, he just brought them. He even learned to bring me extra to calm my nerves.

The ship never felt overwhelming. There were two pools, five restaurants, a tennis court, a basketball court, and a spa. There were shops, bars, and a cafe. The decor wasn’t the most up-to-date, but none of our parents was snooty about accommodations.

The most frustrating part of the cruise, aside from the fact that my Spanish was limited to “Yo quiero vomitar,” was that we didn’t have much time at our stops. In Quebec City we arrived at 7 a.m. and had to be back on the boat by 3:30 p.m., barely giving us enough time to chew our crepes.

Our week on the boat didn’t resemble any television advertisement I’d ever seen for a family cruise — we were never attired in matching T-shirts — but it was memorable in its own odd way. I spent the months leading up to the cruise worrying for nothing. Our parents seemed to adore each other.

The cruise ended in Montreal, and the plan was to spend a day in the city with parents, and then get them on a plane and send them home so Alex and I could spend a few days alone. In other words, our vacation would begin once the parents were gone. But this plan unraveled when my parents insisted on staying in Montreal with us. I pleaded with them, and even bluntly explained how Alex and I were looking forward to a few days alone, but they wouldn’t leave. Alex’s parents obediently flew home after a day in Montreal, but my family vacation
continued.

This was all testing my patience, but I learned it was also another test. Alex, ever the nice guy, wanted our parents to meet and spend time because he had a secret agenda. After dating for more than two years, he was ready to propose marriage, and if we were going to get married, he wanted our families to know each other.

So, on the last night of our trip, with my parents out wandering somewhere in Montreal (I’m guessing they found my poutine restaurants and strip clubs), Alex brought me to a nice restaurant and asked me to marry him. I had passed the test.

Shortly after I told my parents Alex and I were getting married, my father suggested that we celebrate our honeymoon with another family cruise. Bring the gang back together for another week on the high seas. I quietly thought “Yo quiero vomitar” and felt the knot return to my stomach.