Mother in law

I suppose the tone of my relationship with my mother-in-law was set with a remark I couldn’t pass up on the day we first met. We – Carol, my future wife at the time, her mother and myself - were having lunch at a Nashville restaurant and my future mother-in-law was rattling on about how she couldn’t understand racism and how she raised her children not to see color. She bragged about her beliefs and proclaimed she even had a black friend when the family lived in El Paso, Texas while my future father-in-law was stationed at Fort Bliss.

            I hesitated for a moment, which was unlike me. It wasn’t often that I passed up a good smart-ass response. And, frankly, I came in prepared to be myself after conversations with Carol about her mother. I had already determined she was an ill-mannered woman whose machine gun style of inappropriate comments were persistently sitting at the surface and often released. Frankly, I was looking forward to our interaction.

            Back to the conversation during that first meeting.

            “If you don’t see color, how do you know your friend was black?” I interjected into her monologue about apparently being a racial rights leader.

            Helluva question in my mind. Helluva rude comment, according to her. Truth be told, though, it wasn’t any more rude than toward the end of the lunch when she told Carol that I was “just a fling” and “there’s no reason for me to get to know him because he won’t be around for long.” She said this, by the way, while I was still sitting across from the table and an active part of the conversation. I have to admit, I kind of admired her being so candid with me sitting at the table. I didn’t agree with what she said but I did respect her words didn’t come behind my back.  

            Turns out she was wrong. I wasn’t a short term thing, we will celebrate our 17^th wedding anniversary in February, so she had to get to know me. And, honestly, our relationship is pretty good. Sure she still makes inappropriate comments – quite regularly in fact – and I still supply a healthy dose – or perhaps unhealthy, depends on your perspective – of smart-ass comments to the relationship. I’ve grown to love her over the years and she rarely calls me by Carol’s old boyfriend’s name anymore (even though she did regularly for roughly the first 15 years of our marriage.) I guess you could call that a win-win.