My Mother-in-Law

I read a statistic the other day that said it is pretty common for brides to find their mothers-in-law formidable. That didn’t sound all that surprising. But the number is something like 60% who report feeling some tension in this relationship. I recall this was true for me and my mother-in-law when her son and I started dating 42 years ago. When I first met her, she was a tall, very attractive, vivacious, witty, athletic, capable, well-dressed working woman in her late 40s. She was clearly the pivot around whom her family revolved. She liked to call the shots, enjoyed a good time, liked to have her kids and their friends around and was hospitable toward me. She made me cups of tea and invited me to dinner. I marveled at the mountains of mashed potatoes she made for her boys – only two boys, mind you, but the potatoes would have fed a hockey team. I tried to hide my life-long aversion to mashed potatoes to avoid disappointing her and so I’d manage to gulp down a few spoonfuls. At Christmas she would make an abundance of cookies: oatmeal with dates, molasses, peppermint, shortbread. And I loved her excellent “zwieback,” those tasty, buttery, yeasty little rolls that she learned to bake from the Mennonite aunties. She teased me endlessly (for years, which got old after awhile) about some hot cross buns that I attempted one Easter that turned out like raisin-studded door stops. I’ve yet to have any luck with yeast.

She was a bit intimidating.

I discovered over the 37 years since I got married that the secret to the mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relationship lies in the latter understanding that it isn’t a competition. My oatmeal cookies will never be as good as hers. My macaroni casserole will never taste the same. I’m pretty certain I’ll never conquer yeast. And I figured out years ago that I wasn’t going to gain sovereignty over her son. I came to understand that he is his own man and his love certainly allowed space for his family and for me. Once I accepted this premise, I could see her as a human being – still my mother-in-law, but not so scary.

Actually I don’t think she knew quite what to do with me. I think she deemed me “really different.” When we got together, she’d ask me two questions, “How’s your mom?” and “How’s your job?” I wasn’t expected to contribute much after that. I’d listen to stories about people I had never met and reminiscences of younger days. I grew to respect a woman who did what she had to do. She worked to provide for her kids. She waited a very long time, until her children were grown and independent, before she walked away from an unhappy marriage. Her second marriage was much happier and when her second husband had heart surgery she revamped their diet so dramatically to keep him healthy that she actually found a way to make her oatmeal cookies with as little fat as possible without them crumbling to dust. When he got Alzheimer’s, she took care of him as long as she could and then got him the best care possible. I believe she went to see him every day.

My mother-in-law passed away on August 2^nd. She was 87. Over the years and in the end, we found peace with each other and said our I love yous. The last time I talked to her, she teased me about the hot cross buns. We both laughed. It made me understand that we had been family for 42 years.