It's been a while and there's been quite a bit going on recently - most notably, a 2-week visit by my mother-in-law (MIL) and the departure of Little Tyke to visit her in Zambia 3 days ago.
Having MIL here was supremely challenging! She's got very set views on things... all things - from being a wife, to feeding a child, to washing dishes. She really is a lovely lady - but quite overbearing (and a little crazy). I've always been intimidated by her, probably stemming from Hubby's earliest descriptions of her as 'gangsta', even long before I ever met her.
The whole time she was visiting, I felt like every minute element of my life was under scrutiny. I found myself wondering how much of the friction I felt was due to my own insecurities and how much was simply down to cultural and background differences.
Let's start with the background theory. I was raised by a single mother: a career woman and product of the 70's - a semi-feminist and fiercly independant individual. MIL on the other hand has lived a pretty traditional life - married for over 30 years, essentially a stay-at-home mom - strong on family values and very religious.
So, obviously I am not in any way used to the kind of interest (read 'interference') that to MIL is simply a mother's duty. From the moment I left the house (and even before then), my mother always treated me as a grown-ass woman. How I ran my house was my business. MIL, on the other hand doesn't have those boundaries.
Firstly, her insistance on me regarding and treating her as my 'other mother' makes me very uncomfortable. I felt like it was being forced on me - and what does that mean, anyway?! My first intinct was to resist. I have a mother - and for the longest time, she was all that I really had. I just didn't grow up like that. I have witnessed many a family member take advantage of my mother, and the feelings of abandonment towards my own father did nothing to engender a strong sense of trust or dependance on family. Also having grown up far away from my extended family, I just don't have that in me. To me, people are people and need to be embraced or held at a distance on that basis only - not by virtue of familial ties... Right or wrong, that's just what I grew to believe over time.
Then, there are my insecurities. Well, where to start...? I have an encyclopedia of them - categorised, ordered chronologically and neatly indexed. There's my inability to handle criticism, my guilt over my mothering skills, my weight issues, my intrinsic passive-aggression - among many many others. So, one can imagine that when told I should be waking up at 4am to make a cooked packed lunch for Hubby; or when the food I cook for my son is left to rot in the fridge & replaced by a meal cooked by his granny; or when I'm told that I "look better in what you're wearing today. I don't know what those other clothes you wear are" - self esteem is knocked to an all-time low.
And it was relentless. I just didn't know how to handle her... I had to balance being respectful with an urge to lash out; and fight back tears while trying to convincingly laugh at jokes that I found deeply hurtful. All day, every day. Being called away from the office because we're out of tomatoes (but what about the entire meal that I had left in the fridge for today's lunch?). Being asked if I don't mind removing my stuff from the laundry basket so that she could iron her son and grandson's clothes!
I tried to look to Hubby for comfort. I even had a talk with him before she arrived, sensitising him to the fact that she made me extremely uncomfortable and pleading with him to try and back me up in things, to help draw those boundaries. But, of course he doesn't see things the way I do see and plenty of what went on happened while he was away. Even when I recounted some of the toughest moments to him, I could see I was treading a delicate line. She is, after all, his mother and - putting myself in his shoes - I could see how a lot of it could be misconstrued as a dislike of her.
To be brutally honest, at the end of it I started to feel like a big baby - oversensitive and too quick to resort to tears. How could I allow myself to feel undermined and so excrutiatingly uncomfortable in my own home. Should I not have just put my foot down? And in fairness, on the last day I did put my foot down. She just laughed at me... and again I was reduced to a quivering ball of tears. Sensitivity is not the lady's strong point, I must say.
But at the end of the day, I got thru it. I have yet to really work this one out in my own head and I'm really quite relieved that she lives in Zambia. In any other situation, I would have just decided 'this is not my type of person' and treated her accordingly - cordial, but distant. Of course you can't treat an MIL like that, but at least not having to deal with her often saves me the pain of trying to work out an alternative way of coping.
What I'm now grappling with is Little Tyke's departure. He left with his granny on Sunday and I haven't spoken to him since. That, however is a whole other story and whole other blog post.
