THE MOTHER-IN-LAW BLUES
By
THE SAVVY OLD LADY ©
Joan Giorgianni

Has any one ever been entertained by a comedian without hearing at least one or two of his or her Mother-In-Law jokes?  Of course not!  Every comedian has an entire repertoire of these jokes and yes, some are new but they basically all revolve around the same old theme of the nasty, crabby mother-in-law.

When my eldest son, (the oldest of five), first got married I swore I would never become that nasty ole “interfering” woman.  I have kept that little promise.  Believe me when I say I stay out of everything...it’s a “speak when I’m spoken to” type of philosophy and to date it has worked out great.  Now that our oldest daughter is married I try doubly hard to keep my word.  Lord help me, I can’t even begin to imagine how much will power it is going to take to do this when all 5 are married.  So, I suppose you could say that I am just a Savvy Old Mother-In-Law, or at least I’m trying to be. 

There are times though when despite my best efforts I find myself smack-dab in the middle of a no-win situation.  Here is a recent experience from the “Annals of The Savvy Old Lady Mother-In Law Files” to illustrate what I mean.

Three years ago my youngest son, who is a U.S. Marine, was deployed to Japan.  It was not long before we started hearing little murmurings during our occasional transglobal phone calls with him of a very nice Japanese girl that he had met and was dating.  Well, just recently Sgt. Marine informed us that he was coming home on leave and, big surprise, guess who was coming with him...yep, his girlfriend.  I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I was to meet her.  I just knew she had to be very, very important in his life since he had never before brought a girl home to meet Mom and Dad, let alone spring for the bucks to fly half-way around the world (Sgt. Marine is a bit of a skin-flint, I guess he takes after his Dad, The Crabby Old Guy, in that regard).  Okay, so I am now thinking this must be “THE ONE” for our Marine.  The fact that she is Japanese is a plus since our family could be the poster-family for “America...the Melting Pot of the World”.  My lineage hails from Poland and Russia and my husband’s is Sicilian.  My beautiful daughter-in-law is from Puerto Rico and our very talented professional drummer son-in-law was born in England and is of Jamaican descent.  So considering our family’s mix of cultures, Thanksgiving and other occasions are very special events at our home.  The diversity and varieties of celebration, food and specialties that we have at any of our Family Feasts rank up there with any international buffet you might go to in some fancy restaurant.  So the thought of a potential Japanese daughter-in-law was very exciting for all of us, and, no, not just for the food.

My husband and I were counting the days before their arrival, however, so was Murphy and his Laws.  From the moment they left Japan and until the time they reached our home everything went wrong.  Their eight-day visit was soon reduced to five-days due to flight delays, immigration and security snafus.  The first intra-Japan flight had to return to the airport because it was not able to hold the proper cabin pressure; that little “mechanical” forced them to stay overnight at an airport hotel.  Then finally on to the Good Ol’ US of A, there was another delay…sort of a “Welcome Home, Marine.” present from the bureaucracy.  Who would have thought my son would have to wait for 4 hours in a “Security Holding Tank” in Detroit’s John Wayne Airport (the first US port in the trip from Japan) to be asked one question by a bored border patrol agent, “Why are you returning home?”  Yoo-hoo, see the ID?... active duty Marine…on leave…coming home to see his family for the first time in over two years!  After answering this one very probing question our Crack Border Security Officer let him go.  Now Sgt. Marine was ran to his departure gate with his girlfriend only to realize that his flight for home had already left!  Just great, now he was spending most of his precious leave time in airports and planes. 

Finally, after Dad spent hours on the phone with the airlines to help sort out connections and shorten his delay getting home from 48-hours to a mere 36-hours, Sgt. Marine and girlfriend arrived on the East Coast of Florida.  Yep, you got it the travel saga continues, we live on the West Coast of Florida.  Luckily his brother lives on that side of the state and he and his wife picked them up at the airport and drove them two hours to reach our home.  So for three days all they saw was the inside of airports, airplanes and a late night ride to reach our home. 

Now, I must tell you Dad does have a tendency of going a little overboard when it comes to welcoming our brood.  On several occasions the kids have even surprised us by showing up unannounced at the door;  I’m convinced they do this so they won’t be mortified at the airport with some new antic Dad has thought up.  For this occasion The Crabby Old Guy had gone out and purchased a five foot high poster board (which he had planned on bringing to the airport).  That could be a blog in itself since Dad is only 5’6” and when he held the poster up all you could see was the sign and a pair of little feet under them.   Next, the old boy searched the web for Japanese phrases, written in Japanese mind you, to add to the signage welcoming our guest.  All I could do was pray that he hadn’t copied the wrong stroke here or there and instead of saying “Welcome to America” it would read “Please, Step on My Shoes”.  Oh, don’t worry he also included a large “WELCOME HOME MR. MARINE” on the poster...just what my son wanted to see when he got home.  Oh, well.

Anyway, back to the Mother-In-Law-Type story.  Finally, they arrived home and all was going well.  They were both exhausted but happy to see us.  Considering their bodies probably didn’t know what time zone they were in a midnight barbeque steak dinner was perfectly fine and they were soon off to bed, separate bedrooms of course.  Mom and Dad aren’t very liberal when it comes to our unmarried kids sharing a room with their significant others in our home.  The next morning, as we all sat down to breakfast, I noticed the girlfriend was sniffling and her eyes were red (jet lag, right?).  Politely, I asked if she was coming down with a cold.  My son immediately spoke up and said that she had an allergy to cats.  Just great, I am the proud owner of a rather rotund Garfield Wannabe cat named Simba, who has probably spread enough of his dander around the house to cause a full blown attack of “cat-itis” in almost anybody even slightly sensitive to a cat.  Not much I could do now since kenneling Simba would not remove the ever present dander.  However, our son’s girlfriend was so very sweet and polite and said, through her sniffles in her broken (but quite good English) it wasn’t a problem.  So there I sat providing boxes of tissues and sympathy.  Strike one for Mom. 

Our son had told us that she understood English but we had to speak slowly.  Alright, I can do that.  Have you ever noticed though that when you’re told to speak slowly you have a tendency of also speaking a bit more loudly?  Try it, you’ll see; I think it’s some sort of reflex which we can’t control.  So yes, the slower and more distinctly I began to speak the louder each word became; I simply couldn’t help it.  I guess I didn’t realize it at first, until my son kept reminding me that she was not hearing impaired only a newbie at the English language.  Strike two for Mom.

Now it was beginning to feel like everything I was doing to make her feel welcome and comfortable was turning into an absolute disaster.  You might say I was trying too hard but it just kept happening.  Before they arrived I had prepared the guest bedroom and bathroom for her.  Hmmm, someone gave me a very expensive bottle of body lotion from France as a birthday gift which I had yet to open.  Yes!  I took out the bottle and placed it in the guest bathroom for her to use.  I was sure she would like this little offering after being on a plane for all that time and see it as a luxurious token of good will.  Sheesh, no one told me that she read less English than she could speak. You got it…Mom and Murphy struck again.  The very next morning she came down to breakfast and half of her face where she had used the body cream was swollen twice the normal size and yes, her eyes were tearing and her nose still running.  Good Lord, at this rate I was killing the girl in small doses.  There go our amicable relations with Japan!  Maybe I was feeling a little paranoid but I would swear that my son was glaring at me at times.  Strike three for Mom.

Originally the plan was that my son and his girlfriend would spend five days with us at home and then we would drive them to Orlando to stay in Disneyworld for three days.  Weeks before, our son had asked his father to book rooms for them at a Disney Resort, which Dad promptly did.  A few days before they arrived, my husband decided to arrange for a room for us for a night at the same resort so we wouldn’t have to make the trek back home the same day.  Our son was a little surprised when he heard of the arrangements but Dad quickly told him that we were going to be staying in two separate sections and we knew he had plans to meet up with some friends and not to worry etc., etc., etc.  As we reached the resort we said our goodbyes and, yes, I breathed a sigh of relief since now I thought there was no way I could screw anything else up for this young couple.   MURPHYYYYY...GO HOME!!!!!

I watched as they took they’re luggage inside the resort to the registration area and Sal soon came back to the car with the key to our room.   At last we got into our room and got settled, while hubby was unpacking I decided to go outside on the porch and look out over the beautiful resort landscape.  Lo and behold, what do I see but our happy couple strolling hand in hand with luggage in tow heading for their room...Drum roll, please!…two rooms down from ours!  The only thing worse would have been if they had given us adjoining rooms.  You know, if we had requested this close proximity it never would have happened.  My son turned and saw me and I could see written all over his face, “NOOOOOOO!” in Marine Corps scarlet red. 

I’m sure at this point he was convinced that his mother did this purposely and wanted to be as far away from me as possible.  The only thing that hadn’t happened yet was the girlfriend hadn’t broken out in hives all over her body.  Hmmm, maybe now the hives would come when she realized the potential future in-laws were only a few doors away. There is just no way to be discreet in a situation like this; so as they exited the elevator and looked straight at me with a little hand wave and sickly smile I quickly disappeared into my room.  Of course, after that Hubby and I always checked to make sure the coast was clear before we entered the hallway. 

The next day, as we were driving home, I wondered how much damage I did to Japanese/American relations and to Boyfriend-Girlfriend relations that past week.  Let’s hope The Savvy Old Lady is not blamed for WWIII…. Okay, that is a bit of an exaggeration and I probably won’t be blamed for any international incident, but I sure did strike out at bat this time.

STAY SAVVY!

Hugs,
The Savvy Old Lady