Tunesday : My Mother in Law

My Mother in Law

(David, G/Diamond, L) Performed by Etta James

I'm sick and tired of your mother, tellin' me what to do
She's always stickin' her nose in my business, it seems I married her instead of you
Oh my mother-in-law
Oh she makes me sick
Oh my mother-in-law
I got to get away from her quick, now
Got to get away from her quick

I've tried and tried to get along, but nothing I do is right
If she can't mind her business, I'm telling you what I'm goin' to do
I'm packing my bags and leaving tonight
Oh my mother-in-law
Oh she makes me scream
Oh my mother-in-law
It's worse than a horrible dream, now
Oh yeah, she's worse than a horrible dream
Wooh....

Somebody has got to go (It won't be me)
It's either her or me (It won't be me)
I'm sick and tired of your mother, there's not enough room for us three
Oh, my mother-in-law
Oh, she worries me so
Oh, my mother-in-law, now
You know she's got to go now, yeah, you know she's got to go
Oh, my mother-in-law
Oh, she worries me so (she drinks all of my booze)

I wanted to write about an interesting phenomenon this week, and while this song is totally over the top, it is definitely more listenable than others of its type (looking at you, Ernie K-Doe), and besides, it is loosely related to this week's theme, and who doesn't love Etta James? Hopefully, it being over the top makes it obvious that I don't mean the lyrics literally.

In my last Tunesday post, I wrote about Kennedy's birth. As I said then, my mother was with us for the week before her arrival and for a few days after. Ma bought me a green velour housecoat (with a zip instead of a belt) for receiving visitors in, and we had a nonstop parade of people come to see the new baby (from all our friends in town to my Aunt Carlene, up from Calgary). Ma cooked for us, made me nutritious homemade juices, took Kennedy when she needed soothing or a diaper change, and all around took care of all of us at a time when the house was so busy and I was exhausted and sore. We were already contemplating moving to Ontario to raise Kennedy near our families, and Ma started offering suggestions for making our house more saleable; she even bought us a new glass coffee table, "To make the room look bigger by not taking up too much visual space". And I appreciated all the help she gave; all the advice and butting in that might have rankled me at another time; I don't think Dave ever liked that table.

As soon as Ma left, Dave's sister, Rudy, flew in for a week - and she helped to take care of Kennedy and I loved the bonding between them; she was helpful and a lovely, calming presence in the house now that most of the visiting was over. 

And as soon as Rudy left, Dave's parents showed up. We knew what day Jim and Bev had hopped in their car to make the cross-country drive towards us, but not having heard from them along the way, we had no idea when to expect them. As it turned out, they burst in the door in the middle of a rare quiet day, when Dave was out working and Kennedy was sleeping upstairs in her crib. With hardly a word to me, Bev (who has always been a loud, cutup of a woman), said, "Where's Kennedy? If she's sleeping I'm going to pinch her on the leg to wake her up!" And I was thrown backwards by the whirlwind: What was this? And, Where was Dave? After the calm and care of first my mother and then my sister-in-law, I was about to experience something very different; starting with me needing to cook a big dinner for them as they took over my baby; insisting that they could soothe Kennedy when she was crying when I knew she wanted me.

Like I wrote before, this was a summer of torrential rains, and even now that they seemed to have abated, Dave was overwhelmed with work; cleaning up sewer backups and still-flooded basements. It took him a long time to get home that first day, and over the next week, his Dad often went out with him on service calls so they could spend some time together (which was really a good thing when Dave's work van broke down and his Dad used his CAA membership to get it towed back to the shop). Which left me alone with my mother-in-law, who had come over 3000 km to visit with her first grandchild; I was far down on the list of Granny's concerns and I took offence to nearly everything she said to me over that week.

And on some level I knew I was being irrational, but I mean that I took offence to everything. Bev told me that when she was in the hospital after Dave's birth, the nurses wanted her to drink a beer to help her milk come in (and because she has never liked the taste of beer, she accepted a lemonade instead). She kept trying to get me to just try it, have a beer, "Why won't you even try a beer?", and I was so offended that this unsophisticated know-nothing (never mind that she successfully raised two babies of her own) wanted me to be consuming alcohol while I was breastfeeding that I wanted to scream; when Dave was at home, I warned him that he would need to speak up the next time his mother started on this if he didn't want to see me lose it.

I can't even remember every example, but every time Bev offered me advice or told me how they did it "back in her day", I took it as criticism; wanted to snark back about how knowledge had advanced since "her day". It drove me crazy that every time I explained why I was doing something a certain way, Bev would shrug and say, "Well, that's different." (And by contrast, when my own mother had been with us, I accepted everything she said as the voice of wise counsel.)

The climax to my unhappiness came when we went to the mall (which I didn't want to do in the first place because Kennedy was new and I was afraid of exposing her to germs; note above and the nonstop flow of visitors I permitted to bring germs into Kennedy's home) and Bev picked out a blue snowsuit and said she was thinking about buying it for Kennedy; just in case our next baby was a boy so we could pass it down. I was irrationally furious about that - as though my mother-in-law was dissatisfied that Kennedy was a girl and would rather buy something for some imaginary future grandson. I tried to calmly say that if she wanted to buy a snowsuit, I'd prefer the purple one with flowers, and again, Bev said that the blue was more practical. And inside, I lost it. This was a rejection of both me and the grandchild I had given her, and I was hurt and angry and bewildered.

I told my stories to several of my friends, and none of them could understand my mother-in-law's strange rejection of her granddaughter. When I told Marg about the snowsuit incident, she said, "If you really want that purple snowsuit, I'll tell Bev that I already bought it for your baby shower and then go buy it for you". All of my friends were lovely and understanding, and despite some of them having had babies and mothers-in-law themselves, none of them recognised that I was the one behaving like a crazy person.

Many months later, when we were indeed living back in Ontario so as to raise Kennedy around our families, I was driving around with my mother and listening to the Dr. Laura radio programme. One man called and said that his problem was between his wife and his mother: Apparently, not long after their first baby was born, his mother started nonstop criticism of his wife (according to her), and the climax to her unhappiness came when the man's mother told his wife that she wondered if it was healthy for her to drink Diet Coke while breastfeeding. His wife lost it, didn't want her mother-in-law coming around anymore, and being stuck in the middle, the man wanted to know how to get his mother to back off. Dr. Laura began by gently suggesting that maybe consuming aspartame while breastfeeding wasn't the best decision, but then she exposed the bigger issue: According to Dr. Laura, first time mothers often interpret criticism where there is none in the advice of their mothers-in-law; this happens all the time, and if this man wanted harmony, he was going to need to help his wife to understand her irrational reaction to what was being offered out of genuine love and concern for the baby. I was jolted by this conversation, and being much less hormonal - and more confident in my ability to keep Kennedy alive - by this point, I was able to recognise my own irrationality. Why don't more first time mothers know about this phenomenon? (Later reflection made me wonder if first time mothers reject their mothers-in-law's advice in order to preserve their own family traditions down the matrilineal line?)

I was immediately more understanding, and when Mallory was born, I was able to just say, "No thanks", to Bev's frequent offers of beer to help the milk come in. (Okay, maybe Etta James' song is capturing a fleeting experience I had, but the fault was all mine. Bev has never been anything but generous and caring, and as Alzheimer's is currently stealing her away from us, I'd give anything to go back to the loud and loving whirlwind that I used to know.)