I don’t like my mother in law and she doesn’t like me. Now, I’m not just assuming she doesn’t like
me, I know it because she has told me in no uncertain terms. If you were unfortunate enough to encounter
this woman and you were to ask her to describe me, then the words she would use
would be snobbish, fat and not good enough for her son. Now let me describe her to you.
She is 74 years old and around five foot 4 inches tall. I’d say she is fairly average build for a
woman of her age. There’s some extra
meat on the bones and the usual age related general drift south of all things
that once stayed present and correct.
Her hair has always been quite blonde, so although there are grey
streaks, you can’t really see them because they blend in with the rest of her
coiffure. Have you heard of the term
“resting bitch face”? Well I’m pretty
sure she’s the reason this phrase was invented, although in her case it’s not
just an unfortunate and incorrect assumption of her demeanour.
Here’s a story about one reason for my dislike of this
woman. It was Christmas several years
ago, and on Boxing Day my mother and father in law were visiting us in our
home. We’d had a buffet lunch that I’d
spent all morning preparing when I would rather have been having a nice long
lie in to recover from the excesses of the day before, and we were sitting in
the lounge relaxing with a nice cup of tea.
She hadn’t even said thank you for any of this and was now slumped in my
favourite armchair with her usual scowl as though she’d been smacked round the
face with a wet flannel.
I was trying to make polite conversation for the sake of my
husband and for on-going family relations, but it wasn’t easy. There are only so many things you can say
about the English weather or so many questions you can ask about what she got
for Christmas. We had bought her what
was, in my opinion, a very nice present that I had taken quite a bit of thought
over. It was a professional family
portrait with my husband, our two children and the family dog. I had asked her if she liked it and her
response was “It’s fine, but you know I don’t like dogs so I don’t know why
you’d want to include him in the picture.
I’m sure I don’t know where I’m going to put it”. See what I mean? I think my response was quite restrained,
considering, but apparently it pushed our laboured relationship too far. I just pointed out that perhaps if she’d put
a bit more care and thought into the presents she gave to her grandchildren
then maybe they’d be in here spending time with her instead of playing with
gifts that were bought as stocking fillers by their aunts and uncles who hadn’t
even seen them since last Christmas.
She didn’t take this too well, and the next thing I knew she
was coming towards me with the speed of a young foal, having leapt out of the
soft cushioning of my beloved armchair and covering the eight foot distance
across the room in seconds, to land a punch smack bang in the middle of my face. My eyes watered immediately; I covered my
face with my hands, and after the initial shock and disbelief I ran out and
headed for the bathroom. This woman was
not going to get the satisfaction of seeing me crumple into a mass of tears, blood
and mucus.
While I was in there checking for damage and composing
myself, I heard the front door open and close.
My husband had suggested that they leave before I came back down. I admit what I had said was intentionally
provocative, but I’d never been physically struck in my life before. How on earth could I be connected to a person
who could stoop to that level, and what’s more, how had my husband turned out
as well as he did with a mother like that?
It was for his sake that I resolved to leave the matter there, and we
never mentioned it again.
A few months later when mother’s day was approaching my
husband asked me to pick up some flowers while I was out shopping for food, and
he would take them round to his mum the next day. I chose a lovely arrangement with what I knew
were her favourite colours. Large pink
daisies and some delicate gypsophila. I
showed them to my husband and he agreed that they would be something she would
like. Then I picked out one of the
longest stemmed flowers and took it upstairs with me to the bathroom, where I
pulled down my pants and wiped the stem in the crevice of my ample behind
before replacing it in the bunch.
To this day it still makes me smile at the thought of her
taking the flowers off her beloved son, holding them close to her nose and
breathing in their sweet fragrance.
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