Marry Me a Little, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise | @MDWorld

December 20, 2015 Victor El-Khouri 2 Comments

Since Michael Davis World seems to revolve around me (ME! ME! ME!) and only me (didn’t there used to be other columnists here?), I’m going to write about something personal today.  Donald Trump, the GOP, bigots of all stripes — you’ll just have to wait.

My son is engaged.

This is wonderful news, at a time when I can really use some.  My boy found someone he loves, who loves him back, in a way that inspires them to spend their lives together.

It’s also kind of terrifying.  I’m going to be a mother-in-law.

In popular mythology, a mother-in-law is a harpy who swoops down into a couple’s lives to heap criticism and scorn.  The child-in-law is never good enough for her baby, and so she finds fault with every interaction.

I don’t want to be that person.

In my own family, my father’s mother never thought my mother was good enough.  When my parents were married, my mother’s parents gave them furniture for their new home.  My father’s mother, without seeing anything, had it returned because those people who didn’t live in New York couldn’t possibly have adequate taste.

I don’t want to be that person, either.

My mother-in-law was a lovely woman who was so stuck in her head that she couldn’t see past her own self.  We once brought her to the city to spend the weekend for our son’s birthday, and she never asked him any questions about his life, or asked us about ourselves.  She just talked about herself, or about her opinions about things she thought would interest us.

I don’t want to be that person, either.

Families are funny that way.  I remember, when I first met my husband, it felt like we had invented sex and desire and passion.  We didn’t meet as virgins, certainly, but this was a qualitative leap forward.  We were broke and inspired and it was us against the world.

Somehow, that turned into marriage and family.  From the outside, I imagine we looked like other white middle-class nuclear families, but inside, we were still rebels.  We were still us.

Does every family feel like that?

Now, my son is going to make his own family, a part of mine but also separate.  Because he is certainly now an adult and his own man, I won’t be able to ask him the kinds of questions that I asked him before, when he was neither of those things.  I won’t know if he needs to go potty, or if he needs a Kleenex for his runny nose, or if he’s making any friends.

(Actually, I haven’t asked him any of those questions for at least 15 years.  But I could, if I wanted to.)

The desire to keep that level of intimacy with one’s child is, I would guess, part of what makes a mother-in-law a harpy.  Here my kid was grown in my actual body, and now this other person is the most important in his life.

Every family should be like that.  Your spouse should be the most important person in your life.

There aren’t a lot of examples of how to be a good mother-in-law.  I’m lucky in that my son’s fiancee is really intelligent (getting her doctorate!) and really funny and sweet.  She is the person who makes my son happy, so that makes her just about as fabulous as he is. It is my hope to be her older friend, the kind of friend whom she allows to care for her children.

Because “Grandma” had better be the next new role in my future.

Martha Thomases, Media Goddess, doesn’t know when she will be a grandmother, but it should happen while she can still fit a baby on her lap.