When people trade horror stories — or, on the more rare occasion, love stories — about their in-laws, it’s the mother-in-law that tends to be the protagonist (or antagonist). As a newlywed, I’ve discovered that married women love little more than commiserating with other married women on the batty antics of their mother-in-laws.
Popular culture paints her as villainous. She is pestering, hyper critical, even envious of the relationship her child has with his or her spouse. There are plenty of websites dedicated to mother-in-law horror stories (e.g. motherinlawstories.com) and just about every parenting magazine runs a list of “tips” on how to deal with an out-of-control monster-in-law. Jokes about mother-in-laws are a dime a dozen. Dr. Phil runs entire episodes on mother-in-law drama, like the excellent, “My Mother-in-Law Believes I’m a Killer.”
And my own mother-in-law, though I love her dearly, certainly isn’t a walk in the park. She’s neurotic, prone to weeping in public and perfectionistic. (She openly wept in the lobby of a vet’s office because a kitschy painting hanging on the wall looked just like her beloved childhood cat.)
Her manic qualities, for better or worse, are heightened during the holidays. A broken ornament or flickering strand of Christmas lights on the roof is enough to dissolve her into a histrionic fit. If you’re too full to finish any part of the six-course meal she cooks and serves on Christmas day, she will remind you, with lowered eyes and a quivering voice, that it took her two days to prepare this meal and she worked very, very hard on it and is so very tired. And god help you if you use the wrong wrapping paper.
But as emotional as she is, she’s also one of the most fiercely loving and loyal people I’ve ever met.
She’ll drop anything she’s doing to answer my phone call. She never forgets a birthday or an anniversary and showers my husband and I with gifts anytime we visit her in Buffalo, N.Y. She cooks us more food than we can eat in a week and sends us home with Tupperware of casseroles and loaves of warm bread.
I don’t think I’m alone in this respect. I mean, is everyone’s mother-in-law really a pestering shrew or an envious witch? Probably not, and it’s something to remind ourselves during the holiday season when families get together and tensions run high.
If your mother-in-law is anything like mine (and I’d be willing to bet she is) she’s excessively compulsive to keep the holiday traditions alive and sacred. She does what she does out of love.
And if you’ve got anyone who loves you to the point of force-feeding you a 6,000-calorie, made-from-scratch holiday dinner, well, consider yourself lucky.
Give your mother-in-law a break by bringing a yule log cake for dessert from THE BONBONERIE (2030 Madison Road, O’Bryonville, bonbonerie.com) or CAKE RACK BAKERY (627 Main St., Covington, Ky., cakerackbakery.com).
This article appears in Dec 10-16, 2014.
