Never Look an in-Law in the Mouth

I don't give my in-laws enough credit.

Mothers-in-law are often misunderstood. I mean, very few people even know that the correct way to pluralize the word mother-in-law is to make it mothers-in-law, not mother-in-laws. This may be because most people only have one mother-in-law and figure that they will never need to use the plural form. But aside from not understanding the grammar related to the mothers of our spouses, I feel like we often suffer miscommunications with our in-laws that cause them to get a bad rap. If we stop to think about it, though, many of the negative mother-in-law jokes that are responsible for making our fear of our moms-in-law second only to step-mothers (who are also undeserving of such a reputation), most—if not all—are unfounded.

Sometimes, I negatively critique people. However, as my husband recently pointed out after patiently listening to me vent for awhile, “Umm . . . not to be offensive, but a lot of the things you've mentioned are just as much your fault as theirs. If not more.” And he was right. I think this is the case with in-laws. I mean, I'm basing my evaluation on a rather small sample size consisting of . . . well, just my in-laws, but they are good people. However, we're both human, so we have some misunderstandings. Some of which can be rather humorous, as illustrated by the following story.

It was the Fourth of July weekend and we were spending it in Richfield with Alex's family. Having had Melody just over a month earlier, we were both tired and in dire need of sleep. I'm sure my mother-in-law could see this and she generously volunteered to watch the baby anytime so that we could go rest. We being new and slightly over-protective parents, though, we nodded and thanked her—while staying close by.

As the baby fussed and our nerves got shorter, though, I finally surrendered and handed Melody over to her grandma. To be completely honest, after having Melody I was overly sensitive and saw offers to help as an attack on my motherhood. You wanna hold my baby? Oh, I see—because I'm not doing a good enough job, huh? (I don't need to say this, but that was the fatigue talking; my mother-in-law was being nice. I, on the other hand, was being a brat.)

Anyway, as Melody continued to fuss, Elaine rubbed her back and softly murmured something which to my ears sounded like “Should we go put some margarine on that belly?”

I thought, I'm just going to ignore that, pretend it didn't happen, and hope that it doesn't.

But the crying continued, and again I heard “Yes. Let's go put some margarine on that tummy.” She then took my baby upstairs. Presumably to smear a mixture of vegetable oils and animal fats on her belly. I was at a loss.

“Alex!” I hissed across the room, “What is your mom going to do to Melody?”

“Hmm . . . what?” he replied as he tore his eyes away from the TV screen.

“She just took Melody upstairs saying something about putting margarine on her belly! I don't want her to put margarine on her belly!” I started into a sleep-deprived panic.

“What the . . . ? I'll go stop her!” And off he ran to rescue our baby from the evil trans fats.

A little while later he returned with a smirk and assured me that everything was fine.

“Well . . . ?” I asked expectantly.

He stifled a snicker and reported: “I asked what she was doing and she told me she was going to put some marjoram oil on Melody's belly to help with her gas, but then she settled down so it was unnecessary.”

Huh. Marjoram. Fancy that.

So, here I stand (or sit, rather), guilty as anyone of condemning my in-laws. However, I would like to say that I'm sorry, and I'm trying not to do it again. They are good, nice people.

They have a really odd daughter-in-law, though.