Our Village

My mother-in-law totally forgot that she was supposed to help with Dolly’s Brownie meeting today.

Last time it was forfeited tickets to see her favorite show in the world, Dancing with the Stars, live and in person, during the finals. We had worked hard to get her those tickets, too.

Where is she?

On a plane, rushing to babysit her other grandkids. Again. The ones that live less than 4 hours away by car, which she should be able to see regularly. The ones she rarely sees at all.

“If I don’t go babysit them, I won’t ever get to see them.” She sounds sad when she says this.

I understand.

And I’m really mad. But not about the Brownie meeting.

I guess I should be grateful. I mean, after six years of my MIL being mostly horrified by me, I jumped to favorite daughter-in-law status by no effort of my own. By simply not holding my children hostage.

My mother-in-law is a real piece of work. And also a great lady. She is pushy and overbearing and bossy. She alternates between overwhelming generosity and extreme thoughtlessness, sometimes all in one day. She is responsible for half the furniture in my house, which I am both very grateful for and also annoyed by. My husband will drop me at a moment’s notice to help her with anything, which drives me crazy.

My mother-in-law made our early marriage so hard that I nearly gave up, more than once. We’re stronger after that, more of a team. She has pecked me to death with questions about every minute detail of my child raising. So I think about it more, and I’m a better mom, more sure about my own decisions because I have to be to stand up to her. She has shown me the very best and the very worst about how to be a wife, so I am more conscious of how I treat my husband day-to-day. She has broken me down with her arguments so many times that I have had to learn my own mind and how to state my opinion firmly and politely. How to stand firm when it is important to me, when to let go of things that truly don’t matter. I’m not shy anymore, that is for sure.

The thing I’m mad about is the parents of those other grandkids, holding their children hostage and only willing to let any of us see them when they need a last-minute sitter. Never showing up for anything except the years-ago negotiated holidays, and only then for the barest minimum possible. For telling us they can’t visit because they have no vacation left, then going to visit the other side of the family every six weeks.

I kind of get it. They live in a mausoleum, where everything is the same every single day, and no one makes too much noise and everything is pre-planned and NO ONE EVER TALKS WHEN THE RANGERS ARE PLAYING, and every holiday must be accompanied by exacting traditions, period. We are loud and laugh a lot and we don’t care about the ball game and we wrestle with the kids and we are very spontaneous. Sometimes we don’t get the gingerbread house made by Christmas Eve because there was a great kids’ movie playing in 3-D at the Imax and we took them to that instead.  Or because we just forgot (oh, heaven forbid!).

The thing is, we finally got to spend some time with their kiddos (they wanted to go on a trip without the kids). I watched their oldest daughter, who pretends to be mute whenever adults speak to her, start opening up and hugging us, telling us things by the end of her last visit, asking to stay longer. I saw their baby, their one-year-old baby, who always looks at you expressionless, eyes half-mast, and so addicted to her pacifier that she puts it in between bites at meals. My mother-in-law hid the pacifiers and that baby’s eyes opened. She starting talking – using words! – and laughing when we laughed, toddling after my mother-in-law’s terrified Chihuahua and squealing “dog! dog!” with glee.

My mother-in-law, my mess of a loud and pushy mother-in-law, did that. She opened those kids up, and they desperately, desperately needed it. They need more of it. I’m angry because those parents think we are too loud and too obnoxious to even be around… and the ones who are suffering for it are their own children.

It’s not as if there’s anything really wrong with my in-laws, either. They are WAY less disfunctional than my family ever dreamed of being. They’re, like, normal. They are kooky in the kinds of ways that you can joke about – when they’re around, even. There’s no reason to shun them.

After eight years of having no family around at all, we moved close to them by our own choice. Sometimes my MIL makes me crazy.  She keeps the kids up too late. She tries to tell me how to do everything. She talks my husband into rearranging our plans when I’m not there, and sometimes I feel like I’m running last place in a race to simply keep up with what’s going on. Nothing ever goes according to plan and I have given up on even trying to make a plan half the time.

Sometimes, it is just HARD to live this close to them.  But my kids, my husband, my marriage, and yes, even me – are all better for it. That is the nature of family.

I hope my brother- and sister-in-law figure this out.

Or, barring that kind of miracle, I hope they’ll at least start going on more trips without their kiddos and dropping them off with us. No, seriously! Leave them here all summer! We would be thrilled to have them.