Holiday Drama

There’s nothing like the holidays to bring families together…

Last weekend all hell broke loose with my South African family. The details aren’t particularly entertaining or relevant, so I won’t bore you, but essentially my mother-in-law did something to upset my sister-in-law and one thing leads to another and suddenly my mother-in-law and my sister-in-law aren’t speaking and my brother-in-law is swearing and my father-in-law is grumbling and my husband is trying to hold it all together while I threaten my sister-in-law with bodily harm should she even think about backing out of the upcoming Christmas vacation. Because if she’s not going, I’m sure as hell not going.

Ah, the drama. It’s better than “Brothers and Sisters.”

As I may have mentioned previously, it’s not exactly easy having Sally for a mother-in-law. She can be hurtful and thoughtless and selfish. She can also be funny and kind and loving. But you never know what you’re gonna get. Now, my sister-in-law, Laurel, has been dealing with this Jeckyl and Hyde routine a hell of a lot longer than I have, so it makes sense that she would be a bit more reactive than me with my grin-and-bear-it approach. Laurel is also someone who calls it like she sees it and isn’t afraid of what you have to say about her opinion. Me, I’m a little less…confrontational.

You might have noticed that over the past four months I have done a lot less complaining about my mother-in-law. I assure you, this isn’t self-imposed censorship. The truth is I really haven’t had that much to complain about. The fifty feet between my door and hers’ has made all the difference in the world to our relationship. Sure, the underlying fear that I might piss her off is still ever-present, but the distance between us, however small, makes it a lot less likely. As time passes, I am starting to feel slightly bad for hating her all those months. I’ve even started to question my judgment and wonder if perhaps I wasn’t a bit overdramatic about the whole thing. But then something like this happens, and my sister-in-law is angry, so I start the day listening to her woes and soon we are polishing off our seventeenth bottle of champagne and still dissecting every horrible thing the evil M-I-L has ever done to us. It sounds funny, right? You can almost picture the scene, straight out of a movie entitled, “Diary of an Angry Daughter-in-Law.” And it is funny. Maybe all the drama is even a little bit fun…

It’s not fair though. To talk about someone behind their back is cruel, right? And I’m not a mean person, yet there I am, touting my list of grievances, every time the subject comes up. I’ll whine about her all day long, but I’m certainly not going to tell her to her face that I think she’s crazy. What good would come from that? She’s definitely not going to change, so what’s the point? And yet, by talking about her behind her back and then smiling sweetly to her face…well, maybe I’m no better than she is. At least Laurel has the guts to occasionally call Sally out on whatever she has done (resulting in a stand off such as we had this past week). It's not that I’m a wimp. I may not be confrontational, but I can hold my own when necessary. The thing with my mother-in-law is – I’m just not sure confrontation would help matters. It hasn’t seemed to help Laurel.

It’s a fine line, knowing when to stand up for yourself against a bully and when to just accept the bully for who they are. It would be one thing to confront my mother-in-law if I thought it would change the situation, but I don’t believe it will.

My mother-in-law is complicated. I don’t want to turn this into a list of her flaws, but to make my point – let’s take Moose as an example. My mother-in-law is perpetually moaning about our dog, Moose. It’s been brought to her attention that this is hurtful to Roger and me, but she can’t seem to stop the passive aggressive comments regarding our only child.

I must admit, things have been better since we threatened to take our annoying dog and move back to the US, but that’s not the point. Whether she vocalizes it or not, Moose annoys her, and I want her to not be annoyed by him. I want her to be thrilled to have her "grand-dog" around (like MY mom!). I know Sally loves him really, but she also sees him as her cross to bear, and asking her to stop with the snide comments isn’t going to change that fact.

I can love her or hate her, but my mother-in-law isn’t changing. And the thing that upsets me isn't what she says, it’s simply who she is – and I don’t think she can help it. Which leads me to another question…is 'niceness' something we can control? And what makes someone nice? The things they say and do? Or the things they think?
(As usual, I digress, but it's just something to think about!)

One of the first lessons I can remember my mother teaching me was: “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” Whether or not biting your tongue when a not-so-nice thought occurs makes you a nice person or just a polite one, well, I’m not so sure, but the lesson is still a good one. Maybe confronting my mother-in-law with my list of grievances would be pointless, but that doesn’t mean I should be complaining about her behind her back. That’s not going to help matters either. In fact, it only feeds the fire.

So, I’ll step back. Take a deep breath and remember that despite her faults, this is the woman who gave birth to my husband. And she loves him more than life, so at the very least, we have that in common.

And in this season of goodwill, I will make a resolution to cut back on the evil M-I-L talk. I will try to accept her for who she is…even if she is slightly psycho.