Our third trip to California with a child in tow was just before the Christmas Henry would turn one. After months of planning this trip, we are greeted at the airport by my mother-in-law and father-in-law in their 1990 Vanagon. The questions I usually get from persons of my generation are (1) what is a Vanagon? and (2) “Do those things still exist?/Aren’t those things from the 60s?”
To address the second question of whether, in fact, these vehicles exist: ‘Yes, Virginia, there is a Vanagon.’ The first one that my in-laws had, they acquired while travelling through Europe (prior to children and in the 60s) and brought it back to the states. They liked it so much; they bought another one in 1990 and still use it.
To adequately address the first question, I must impart that my in-laws owned, not one, but 2, identical, stripped to the bones, Vanagons, at some point during my husband’s lifetime. The Vanagon’s logo should’ve been: “Seats 20, safety optional.” And while this one was actually manufactured after 1980, I believe that my in-laws would’ve bought a 1960s Vanagon, had it been an option, and had it been cheaper. I will note that there is not one single upgrade to a car that my mother-in-law, to this date, has determined is ‘worth paying for.’ There is no need for a radio (actually forbidden while she drives because she can’t hear herself talk). She likes ‘fresh air’ and not air conditioning (even in 100 degree weather with 100% Virginia humidity), so having air conditioning is another ‘waste.’ And why pay for power accessories when you can have a husband who will move them for you. I think her ‘return to basics’ approach is one of the reasons they have been hesitant to make a new car purchase in over 10 years, close to 15. You can’t even buy a stripped down car these days if you wanted to. I will also add that my mother-in-law doesn’t believe in seat belts and only mildly thinks that Car Seats are even necessary for children. Famous quote: “We didn’t use them in the 1970s and my kids survived just fine.”
So, on December 20, they were waiting at LAX in the Vanagon for us to drive home. I will temper my thoughts with the prior story of the first pick up at Long Beach airport, when they brought their ‘newer’ Olds, we didn’t have enough room and weren’t able to shut the trunk. So while I had a nerve-wrecking drive, watching my husband maneuver the same vehicle he and his high school buddies ‘borrowed one night for a road trip to Mexico,’ thinking of how if the brakes failed my husband and my mother-in-law would be splattered onto the roof of the car in front of us, if they weren’t able to fly further from the flat-fronted Vanagon with its engine elsewhere, we could’ve spent the ride crammed into the Olds low-rider. And thankfully (I think) my husband is driving more than 45 miles per hour. When my father-in-law drives, my husband (and I) are both a bit impatient watching other cars that go 55 scream past us on the highway. We arrive at Chez Kirkeby to encounter a dirt ‘lawn’ and a dumpster full of the Ivy that once occupied front lawn of their home. But what concerned me the most as we approached the house were the apologizes from my mother-in-law concerning the condition of the house. Now I was worried. To begin with, she isn’t really a homemaker. While she’s been home full time for 35 years, she doesn’t cook, minimally cleans, and doesn’t really organize very much. Oh, and she doesn’t ever thrown anything ‘useful’ away. There are a few aspects of her life that are very controlled, but on a macro level, the house is far from it. I always fear I am becoming her, partially because I enjoy some of her tendencies (to a relatively light extent) and partly because my husband tells me so. So while I don’t want to endure it, it’s probably therapeutic as after a visit, I come home and pack up stuff for Goodwill.
So we arrive at the house and it’s a disaster area as expected. The ‘public’ areas are appropriately picked up (Note: Living Room, the Guest Room and the Family Room are free of most clutter. These are ‘public areas’), but there is only one ‘available’ bedroom for our family. I am used to at this point, setting up the pack-n-play in our room when we are visiting and dealing with an almost one-year-old breastfeeding advocate who thinks if he see us, it’s eat and then playtime. But, after this long day, and the fact they have a 4 bedroom house, and only 2 occupants that share a room, I had hoped one other room would be open enough for us to squeeze Henry in somewhere. Further, my mother was planning to join the family in about 3 days for the holidays, and she would need to sleep somewhere. My MIL had explained she ‘got too busy’ and would need to do some moving around before my mom got there. So, thinking that I could be crafty and find a little place to put my son so I can get a good night’s rest, I open the door to the adjoining room and there are no less than about 15 boxes atop 2 twin beds, and a full dining room set stacked with several messes of random items from my sister-in-law’s growing up. So much that you can’t even walk through the room to get to the bathroom. We were staying in my husband’s ‘old’ room, which was also ‘a public’ guest room, so it was cleaned up enough for guests. The 4th room or ‘Den’ is packed with Banker Boxes that all stand about 6-7 feet high and that are dusty and mostly full of junk mail from the late 80s and early 90s that my MIL couldn’t yet bear to part with. This paperwork was probably unnecessary and/or just a plain fire hazard, but until she could take the time to read every piece, it would stay. There is about enough room to stand once you slide open the pocket door to the room, but other than that, it’s musty, scary, and full. So I resign myself to, at least for tonight, share our room with a child who gets up at the first sight of the sun and a very avid nurser.
We come in to find a dinner planned (half the battle) in honor of my husband’s birthday a few days earlier. We flew out after he had finished his semester exams and his birthday fell on an exam day. So there wasn’t a whole lot of celebrating then and she had planned a ‘feast’ for the evening. I don’t recall the entire menu, but I remember 2 distinct things about it: (1) there was a tasteless piece of meat that had been cooked no less than 4 hours and (2) there was a ‘Confetti’ birthday cake that was iced and served from the dish that it baked in. I chalk both of these things up to my mother-in-law’s Midwestern upbringings and her motherhood commencing during the 1970s. My MIL claims the cake is my husband’s favorite. I think it WAS his favorite from his teen or childhood years, but I think while he still likes and eats it, it’s one of those many things a mother will always remember as her child’s favorite.
One distinct thing about spending 2 weeks at her house, and having to make sure that my child and husband are fed, is making sure that there is the right amount of food in the house for the appropriate meals. My MIL likes to collect food, but most of it is not readily edible. She has about 200 bottles of salad dressing, 25 boxes of cake mix and no less than 30 lbs of sugar (her ‘required’ amount) and about 15 grapefruits at one given time, but nothing defrosted to be able to make a meal. So while I was elated that there was something to eat I questioned three things: first, how old the meat was and second, would I be able to stomach it? And finally, whether this would be the one and only meal she would plan and prepare. That Christmas, my MIL and I did battle over my ‘taking over her kitchen.’ Now every mother-in-law will see me as the rude and intrusive daughter-in-law, and all DILs will understand that I had a little guy to feed and, as a ‘nurturer’ I also wanted to be able to feed my husband, his poor father-in-law, who usually subsided on questionably old ‘leftovers’(because my MIL won’t eat leftovers), and myself.
Speaking of questionable leftovers, once when I was visiting pre-children and possibly pre-marriage, I was offered leftover ‘meatloaf.’ I highlight that it was called ‘meatloaf,’ but it was in fact, a meat loaf (emphasis on loaf). Basically a chunk of only ground beef that had been cooked for a long period of time. My father-in-law couldn’t remember when it was made before it was offered to us, but I was hungry and decided to take a chance. However, it was one of those meals when you were physically forcing yourself to eat something because you were constantly thinking about whether it would be bad for you in the end. In order to stomach the meat loaf, I asked for ketchup as I couldn’t find it in their fridge. ‘We don’t buy ketchup.’ was my MIL’s answer as she pulled out a former Country Crock container of Butter filled with various companies’ ketchup packets. I was initially relieved that I would know where the ketchup came from until I noted that the logo from McDonald’s was not a current one. Looking at one of the packets, it had a 1979 trademarked symbol, that I know hadn’t been used in a probably since they invented the Happy Meal. That ketchup was brown. Avoiding the brown ketchup, I moved onto a ‘Jack n The Box’ packet that looked more recent and, more importantly, being from the East Coast, I don’t know Jack in the Box well enough to know whether it was old or new. At least that ketchup was red. I worried about the other Tupperware containers full of mayonnaise packets, but knew I had to pick my battles.
Back to Christmas: that night’s dinner, the meat was edible enough and I tried to forget its origin. For the remaining meals while in California though, I ended up making a trip to Trader Joe’s the next morning, for a few things, one of them notably wine and beer. My in-laws don’t drink. They don’t forbid it (as my MIL’s sister and husband do and I am not really up for those visits without some buffer of alcohol), so I am fortunate that they, at least, allow it. But when you get off a 6 hour flight with a one year old, you NEED that glass of wine. For this ‘celebration,’ my sister-in-law and her husband were there and my brother-in-law, who understands the pain, was smart enough to contribute to the cause and bring some beers and a bottle of wine.
So we have a nice dinner, and I get ready to put Henry to bed, so I can REALLY enjoy the wine and take a load off after a long day. I take him into the bathroom and start to get ready for bath time. He is not really interested in the bathtub - in fact, because of the 1960s doors and lighting combination (neither of which have been remotely updated in the over 40 years they have owned the house), the bathroom is a quite scary to a little guy. So, with his grip firmly on me, giving me the message, ‘there is no way I am getting in that tub,’ I start to run the water. While squatted down, I notice what any mother would, lots of black, curly small hairs all over the tub. I am not sure at first what they are, but upon further inspection, notice it is pubic hair. I look up a little higher and notice a very distinct discoloration line of the circa 1964 mustard-colored tub. The massive amount of hairs, combined with the very visual scum line, is evidence enough that this tub hasn’t been cleaned in a while.
At this point, all I wanted to do was put my child to bed. Instead, I was asking how an unemployed person, with no obligations, and family coming into town, couldn’t find the 15 minutes it took to scrub the tub, OR because they could afford it, pay someone else to. I was livid that she could take and keep detailed notes on all the members of ‘Survivor,’ but not take the time to clean the bathroom your only grandchild would be using. I digress. I ask for something to clean the tub (as everyone was still eating and didn’t want to thoroughly disgust the rest of the family) and my MIL leaps from the table to do it herself. I explain that, at this point, it’s easiest if I just do it (also to ensure that IF she had ‘cleaned’ it the first time, then her ‘cleaning’ was questionable at best). So I scrub the tub, bath the baby and get him ready for bed. Do his ‘normal routine’ about 3 hours behind so we hopefully get him on California time, and he’s asleep. I did not revisit the tragic bathroom, but did scrub the rest of it and washed all of the towels, just in case her laundering abilities mimicked the cleaning.
Time passes and it is now after midnight (almost 3 am our time) and we decide to go to bed, BUT before we roll in, my MIL says ‘Wait! I need to change the sheets.’ I ask ‘Why?’ and she explains that when her sister and brother-in-law were there about a month ago, she hadn’t changed the sheets yet. Yet?! She took the time to make the bed, but left the dirty sheets on it. Oh joy! Now the whirling dervish is going to wake up the sleeping baby to change the sheets. Remember, this is a woman who doesn’t understand the meaning of ‘indoor voice.’ I interrupt her scrambling, ask where the sheets are and proceed to change the bed. I am able to maneuver in the room to change the sheets without her presence and thankfully the baby is out and it’s not as hard as I thought it would be. When we finally laid to rest on the 25 year-old, ‘flatted by time’ pillows and starchy clean sheets, I was too tied to think about the almost 500 pounds that were sweating on that mattress and pillows only a month prior to that night.
I lay there thinking to myself how I survived the first day on the island without getting voted off. 14 more to go. . .
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Anal Sacks
Now don’t get me wrong, a good portion of the time I see her, I want to kill my mother-in-law, but my husband is quick to point out that our relationship is more than just those times. We do share a lot in common and often appreciate that she can make me laugh. The ways she makes me laugh is usually because (1) she’s either completely misinterpreted something an average person would not, or (2)because she is doing something I cannot imagine most people would do in open public, or admit to doing in open public.
So there we were, sitting on the couch during one of her visits watching one of her all-time favorite shows, the Bachelorette. It was the finale and she was digging Reid, who was dropped the prior week, but she was convinced he would make it back to propose and win the girl. She had been at our house for about a week, figured out our DVR and managed to ‘catch up’ on all of her favorite shows during her visit. You see, I will date myself, but this was the summer that all TVs switched to digital. My mother-in-law was prepared (or at least she thought she was). No one was going to make her purchase regular TV if she had anything to do with it. Hell, she’d boycott watching TV (one of her few personal pleasures that she would not readily admit to) before she’d front some money for it.
I will digress and give some additional perspective: My mother-in-law will not pay for call waiting because it is 35 cents extra a month. She has the cheapest phone plan where you have a limited number of outgoing calls (check it out, you too can get a land line for about $15/month, you just have to beg for it) and does not have long distance on her phone because she purchases phone cards from 7-eleven that she gets for 3 cents a minute. She also tracks, in a notebook, the number of minutes she spends on each phone call, so she knows who she’s spending that long distance money on at a whopping 3 cents a minute (I can get into the 'Even Stevens' at another point in time). She has an answering machine to screen calls (why pay $1.15/month extra for the caller id?) and she will only accept an answering machine that uses tapes, so she can keep them (the hording is another matter saved for another time). She won’t get internet at home, because she can drive to the library and access her account for free for up to 30 minutes and then has even ‘borrowed’ (really stolen) library cards of other unbeknownst citizens to use their computer minutes while she is there if she needs more (‘They all have computers at home and shouldn’t have left their cards. Anyway, they’re free cards, they can get another one!’). So asking her to take advantage of a $99/month combo package is akin to asking her to slit her wrists and give up. Further, she won’t even pay for a stamp to mail in her bills, she takes them in, in person, to pay them. So here you are looking at going from a $15-20/month cost to $99(plus tax). Hey, if they want to sit in the dark all night so they can one day pay for one of their grandson’s pizza habit in college, go for it I say.
So the switch to digital TV arrives. Yes, they do have a TV that was manufactured after my husband’s birth, but I am not sure that it was a purchase made this decade. Further, she has thoroughly researched (by way of borrowing Consumer Reports from the library) all the digital boxes and has sent away for her coupons. Because they will only allow two per household, she determines the cheapest and most effective way to make the purchase and they have 2 boxes ready to go for the switch. Well the switch comes and goes, she can’t seem to instruct my father-in-law well enough to be able for him to get these boxes to work, so they are forgoing TV for the time being. Why doesn’t she return the boxes? Because she can’t get the money back for the coupon (just any additional costs she paid) and that’s blasphemy to essentially ‘give’ back the box to the store. Remember this is the same woman who sends her 70 year old husband to the roof to fix the Antenna when they don't get certain channels well enough with the rabit ears.
Anyway, I digress. We are sitting on the couch, and she has made a ‘bet’ with me that it’s Reid, and I have my money on Ed. When my mother-in-law thinks she has a sure thing, she is willing to put her money where her mouth is, BUT IS STILL CHEAP, so she usually puts a ‘burger’ on it (her version of a beer, I presume). I also presume that this burger, if she is buying, is from a McDonald’s Dollar menu. If she isn’t the one buying, she might be willing to take an upgrade. Well Oliver, our 90 pound 5 year old Weimaraner who thinks that he is a cat, snuggles up between us on the couch. My mother-in-law doesn’t really like dogs in the house and believes they are ‘for mousing,’(an Indiana term for 'what purpose a pet serves') so she is already not so happy he’s resting his back and hind quarters against her thigh, but he is a sweet dog and curled into a ball, so the accepts it. About an hour into the show he starts licking himself pretty good in the nether regions. He is a male, although he’s a eunuch and doesn’t have as much need or space to clean down there, he was managing quite fine. All of a sudden a potent odor comes from the space he was licking. He then climbs down and starts ‘cleaning’ a little better, even taking whatever he left behind on the leather couch (thank god we got the leather couch too as it is actually clean-able!). My mother-in-law, who is ‘smell sensitive’ and has a very difficult time managing to change her grandchildren’s diapers because she cannot stand the smell starts roaring with disgust, rolling back and forth on her seat on the couch(imagine, if you will a waddle whilst seated), trying to determine how important it is for her to get away from the dog verses having to give up her spot for her show. I simply explained to her that Oliver had probably chosen that time to depress is anal sacks and the smell (which was both potent and equally disgusting) was the result. She then decides to take my pillows to create a barricade between her and former ‘dog spot’ so she doesn’t have to move off the couch. I was quick to point out that the couch is clean-able; the pillows, not so much. So she gets up and what is revealed is Oliver had been using her as leverage for his anal sack depression onto the couch (which he did not leave, but cleaned up afterwards), but due to the night lighting and warm dog, it was difficult to see (or feel) until we were all off the couch. So she asks me again about the ‘anal sacks’ and what I was talking about. She had owned a dog on and off for most of her married life, and I assumed at one point it would’ve come up so I started explaining it to her: that sometimes vets do it them, some dogs do it to themselves or the owners will do it. During this time, while explaining to her the process, I had been busily finding cleansers and Febreeze to dull the stench. My mother-in-law is still on the couch with a hanky in one hand, covering her nose, and the other hand is waving in the air, attempting to move the smell away from her.
And she responds in her loud and ratchety voice, ‘What? Anal Sex? Who would do that to the dog?’ At this point, the chuckles I had over having to clean the stench has progressed to tears, laughing so hard I am about to wet my pants, hardly able to come up with a way to respond. She is staring at me, attempting the kind of laugh you have when you realize someone else thinks something is funny and you aren’t sure you got the joke. She continues that she still doesn’t understand what anal sex has to do with the smell. I almost have a scream it out, explaining I had said ‘anal SACKS,’ not ‘anal SEX.’ Realizing her own misintepretation, she joined me in my fit of hilarity, tears and all.
So there we were, sitting on the couch during one of her visits watching one of her all-time favorite shows, the Bachelorette. It was the finale and she was digging Reid, who was dropped the prior week, but she was convinced he would make it back to propose and win the girl. She had been at our house for about a week, figured out our DVR and managed to ‘catch up’ on all of her favorite shows during her visit. You see, I will date myself, but this was the summer that all TVs switched to digital. My mother-in-law was prepared (or at least she thought she was). No one was going to make her purchase regular TV if she had anything to do with it. Hell, she’d boycott watching TV (one of her few personal pleasures that she would not readily admit to) before she’d front some money for it.
I will digress and give some additional perspective: My mother-in-law will not pay for call waiting because it is 35 cents extra a month. She has the cheapest phone plan where you have a limited number of outgoing calls (check it out, you too can get a land line for about $15/month, you just have to beg for it) and does not have long distance on her phone because she purchases phone cards from 7-eleven that she gets for 3 cents a minute. She also tracks, in a notebook, the number of minutes she spends on each phone call, so she knows who she’s spending that long distance money on at a whopping 3 cents a minute (I can get into the 'Even Stevens' at another point in time). She has an answering machine to screen calls (why pay $1.15/month extra for the caller id?) and she will only accept an answering machine that uses tapes, so she can keep them (the hording is another matter saved for another time). She won’t get internet at home, because she can drive to the library and access her account for free for up to 30 minutes and then has even ‘borrowed’ (really stolen) library cards of other unbeknownst citizens to use their computer minutes while she is there if she needs more (‘They all have computers at home and shouldn’t have left their cards. Anyway, they’re free cards, they can get another one!’). So asking her to take advantage of a $99/month combo package is akin to asking her to slit her wrists and give up. Further, she won’t even pay for a stamp to mail in her bills, she takes them in, in person, to pay them. So here you are looking at going from a $15-20/month cost to $99(plus tax). Hey, if they want to sit in the dark all night so they can one day pay for one of their grandson’s pizza habit in college, go for it I say.
So the switch to digital TV arrives. Yes, they do have a TV that was manufactured after my husband’s birth, but I am not sure that it was a purchase made this decade. Further, she has thoroughly researched (by way of borrowing Consumer Reports from the library) all the digital boxes and has sent away for her coupons. Because they will only allow two per household, she determines the cheapest and most effective way to make the purchase and they have 2 boxes ready to go for the switch. Well the switch comes and goes, she can’t seem to instruct my father-in-law well enough to be able for him to get these boxes to work, so they are forgoing TV for the time being. Why doesn’t she return the boxes? Because she can’t get the money back for the coupon (just any additional costs she paid) and that’s blasphemy to essentially ‘give’ back the box to the store. Remember this is the same woman who sends her 70 year old husband to the roof to fix the Antenna when they don't get certain channels well enough with the rabit ears.
Anyway, I digress. We are sitting on the couch, and she has made a ‘bet’ with me that it’s Reid, and I have my money on Ed. When my mother-in-law thinks she has a sure thing, she is willing to put her money where her mouth is, BUT IS STILL CHEAP, so she usually puts a ‘burger’ on it (her version of a beer, I presume). I also presume that this burger, if she is buying, is from a McDonald’s Dollar menu. If she isn’t the one buying, she might be willing to take an upgrade. Well Oliver, our 90 pound 5 year old Weimaraner who thinks that he is a cat, snuggles up between us on the couch. My mother-in-law doesn’t really like dogs in the house and believes they are ‘for mousing,’(an Indiana term for 'what purpose a pet serves') so she is already not so happy he’s resting his back and hind quarters against her thigh, but he is a sweet dog and curled into a ball, so the accepts it. About an hour into the show he starts licking himself pretty good in the nether regions. He is a male, although he’s a eunuch and doesn’t have as much need or space to clean down there, he was managing quite fine. All of a sudden a potent odor comes from the space he was licking. He then climbs down and starts ‘cleaning’ a little better, even taking whatever he left behind on the leather couch (thank god we got the leather couch too as it is actually clean-able!). My mother-in-law, who is ‘smell sensitive’ and has a very difficult time managing to change her grandchildren’s diapers because she cannot stand the smell starts roaring with disgust, rolling back and forth on her seat on the couch(imagine, if you will a waddle whilst seated), trying to determine how important it is for her to get away from the dog verses having to give up her spot for her show. I simply explained to her that Oliver had probably chosen that time to depress is anal sacks and the smell (which was both potent and equally disgusting) was the result. She then decides to take my pillows to create a barricade between her and former ‘dog spot’ so she doesn’t have to move off the couch. I was quick to point out that the couch is clean-able; the pillows, not so much. So she gets up and what is revealed is Oliver had been using her as leverage for his anal sack depression onto the couch (which he did not leave, but cleaned up afterwards), but due to the night lighting and warm dog, it was difficult to see (or feel) until we were all off the couch. So she asks me again about the ‘anal sacks’ and what I was talking about. She had owned a dog on and off for most of her married life, and I assumed at one point it would’ve come up so I started explaining it to her: that sometimes vets do it them, some dogs do it to themselves or the owners will do it. During this time, while explaining to her the process, I had been busily finding cleansers and Febreeze to dull the stench. My mother-in-law is still on the couch with a hanky in one hand, covering her nose, and the other hand is waving in the air, attempting to move the smell away from her.
And she responds in her loud and ratchety voice, ‘What? Anal Sex? Who would do that to the dog?’ At this point, the chuckles I had over having to clean the stench has progressed to tears, laughing so hard I am about to wet my pants, hardly able to come up with a way to respond. She is staring at me, attempting the kind of laugh you have when you realize someone else thinks something is funny and you aren’t sure you got the joke. She continues that she still doesn’t understand what anal sex has to do with the smell. I almost have a scream it out, explaining I had said ‘anal SACKS,’ not ‘anal SEX.’ Realizing her own misintepretation, she joined me in my fit of hilarity, tears and all.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Unnecessary Objects
We arrived in Long Beach, California, thankfully by way of Oakland, to find that my in-laws were not yet at the airport. Carolee has not worked, ‘outside of the home,’ since my husband was born, approximately 32 years after our arrival that day. And despite having all that time on her hands, cannot manage to get anything done, or be on time. It was a typical sunny, Southern California day and they knew our arrival was impending, planned for a few months, and here we were, standing on the curb of what was once a small, private airport, with 4 pieces of luggage, a stroller, an infant seat and a three-month-old. This time was not the time I would have picked to be late, or to be late because I had been at a Thrift Store picking up unnecessary objects.
They arrived in the 1992 Olds, riding low, not because they had purposefully created it, but because they took ‘just enough’ care of the car to justify keeping it. I knew their caravan of car selections, and I guess I was relieved that this was the newest of the lot, but I don’t think I was completely prepared for the fact that there would probably not be enough room. Further, that afternoon we were set to visit with one of my husband’s friends from High School and his family that lived nearby in Long Beach. They were our friends who didn’t have parents that shopped at the Thrift Store or parents who drove cars that should have been sold for scrap 75,000 miles earlier.
As always, we were happy to see them, but between the stress of travelling with an infant, the waiting curbside for a solid 30 minutes and the concern that we would not fit in the car, I was peeved, or possibly and more appropriately, pissed off. I have never really, in my relationship with my husband, ever held my tongue with his mother. Perhaps part of it is that I know she gives me the same respect; perhaps part of me is the fact I can't often see her as my mother, or that I actually do.
Once they pull up, my mother-in-law waddles from her constant seat as the navigator and instructor in the car, and my father-in-law springs from the driver’s side, immediately offering his outstretched, bony arms for a warm hug, followed by a long look at our luggage. My mother-in-law is wearing elastic waist K-mart polyester pants, in her staple color of either khaki or black, circa 1980s time frame when she went from caring what she wore to caring what it cost to wear it. For what she doesn’t care about in her personal hygiene or clothing selections, she makes up for with the amount of jewelry she is wearing. No less than 6 gold bangles on each arm, several gold chains, rings on at least two fingers on each hand, and a delicate, 24 carat gold watch which could only be read by 20/15 vision, and if she wasn’t clearly white, she could easily have earned her way as an extra in a Bollywood movie.
We were travelling from Virginia, out to San Francisco, and then to Los Angeles, with a three-month-old and expecting the normal, mid-March weather changes. For a first time mom, there was no ‘packing light.’ After popping their trunk on the Olds, revealing the less than spacious trunk, despite what one might think, we cannot fit all four pieces of our luggage, the baby gear and the people necessary in the car. Did I mention they live 70 miles from the airport?
Again, I thanked God we were coming off a one hour flight and not a 5 hour one. After watching my mother-in-law instruct and reprimand my father-in-law for his inability to properly pack the close-to-if-not-over-the-50-lb-limit luggage pieces, we were able to get most of them in the back, but the trunk would still not close. So my mother-in-law waddles into the airport for some string. Well she starts to, and then realizes that she has a perfectly capable husband who she can tell to do that for her. She spends no less than 5 minutes explaining what the string should look like, how long it should be and how much he will need. So in the time that it could have taken for her to go in and do it herself, she spends telling him how to do it.
I am only a little less embarrassed because they are not my blood relatives. I know that despite their inability to purchase cars made in the any decade close to the one they are in does not reflect on their financial status. I don’t think my mother-in-law owns or would purchase any clothing that was new. She thinks paying more than $5 for an article of clothing is ridiculous and often even thinks something more than $2 is not worthy of her money. But she will buy and wear a $3000 watch with her $2 outfit.
Once my father-in-law comes out of the airport, string in hand, we spend about another 20 minutes attempting to secure the trunk down, with the luggage showing through about a foot of space between the hood and the closure. The baby is thankfully not too concerned with the mess, but I am, given at his age, babies are ticking time bombs and want to feed when they want to feed (especially my boob-only and boob-now little man). So we pile into the car: my in-laws riding in the front, with the snap-n-go stroller between them and a baby bath tub (the thrift store purchase that morning for 75 cents) on my mother-in-law’s lap. Henry is secured in between my husband and I, who are both travelling with various pieces of baby gear on our laps in the back. We looked like the Clampets, heading on the 5 up to Beverly Hills. . .just in about 5 decades later.
I can hear the banjo play in my head as we roll the (now) low rider through Long Beach, capturing some of this on video, at least what I can see through the myriad of unnecessary objects atop me.
They arrived in the 1992 Olds, riding low, not because they had purposefully created it, but because they took ‘just enough’ care of the car to justify keeping it. I knew their caravan of car selections, and I guess I was relieved that this was the newest of the lot, but I don’t think I was completely prepared for the fact that there would probably not be enough room. Further, that afternoon we were set to visit with one of my husband’s friends from High School and his family that lived nearby in Long Beach. They were our friends who didn’t have parents that shopped at the Thrift Store or parents who drove cars that should have been sold for scrap 75,000 miles earlier.
As always, we were happy to see them, but between the stress of travelling with an infant, the waiting curbside for a solid 30 minutes and the concern that we would not fit in the car, I was peeved, or possibly and more appropriately, pissed off. I have never really, in my relationship with my husband, ever held my tongue with his mother. Perhaps part of it is that I know she gives me the same respect; perhaps part of me is the fact I can't often see her as my mother, or that I actually do.
Once they pull up, my mother-in-law waddles from her constant seat as the navigator and instructor in the car, and my father-in-law springs from the driver’s side, immediately offering his outstretched, bony arms for a warm hug, followed by a long look at our luggage. My mother-in-law is wearing elastic waist K-mart polyester pants, in her staple color of either khaki or black, circa 1980s time frame when she went from caring what she wore to caring what it cost to wear it. For what she doesn’t care about in her personal hygiene or clothing selections, she makes up for with the amount of jewelry she is wearing. No less than 6 gold bangles on each arm, several gold chains, rings on at least two fingers on each hand, and a delicate, 24 carat gold watch which could only be read by 20/15 vision, and if she wasn’t clearly white, she could easily have earned her way as an extra in a Bollywood movie.
We were travelling from Virginia, out to San Francisco, and then to Los Angeles, with a three-month-old and expecting the normal, mid-March weather changes. For a first time mom, there was no ‘packing light.’ After popping their trunk on the Olds, revealing the less than spacious trunk, despite what one might think, we cannot fit all four pieces of our luggage, the baby gear and the people necessary in the car. Did I mention they live 70 miles from the airport?
Again, I thanked God we were coming off a one hour flight and not a 5 hour one. After watching my mother-in-law instruct and reprimand my father-in-law for his inability to properly pack the close-to-if-not-over-the-50-lb-limit luggage pieces, we were able to get most of them in the back, but the trunk would still not close. So my mother-in-law waddles into the airport for some string. Well she starts to, and then realizes that she has a perfectly capable husband who she can tell to do that for her. She spends no less than 5 minutes explaining what the string should look like, how long it should be and how much he will need. So in the time that it could have taken for her to go in and do it herself, she spends telling him how to do it.
I am only a little less embarrassed because they are not my blood relatives. I know that despite their inability to purchase cars made in the any decade close to the one they are in does not reflect on their financial status. I don’t think my mother-in-law owns or would purchase any clothing that was new. She thinks paying more than $5 for an article of clothing is ridiculous and often even thinks something more than $2 is not worthy of her money. But she will buy and wear a $3000 watch with her $2 outfit.
Once my father-in-law comes out of the airport, string in hand, we spend about another 20 minutes attempting to secure the trunk down, with the luggage showing through about a foot of space between the hood and the closure. The baby is thankfully not too concerned with the mess, but I am, given at his age, babies are ticking time bombs and want to feed when they want to feed (especially my boob-only and boob-now little man). So we pile into the car: my in-laws riding in the front, with the snap-n-go stroller between them and a baby bath tub (the thrift store purchase that morning for 75 cents) on my mother-in-law’s lap. Henry is secured in between my husband and I, who are both travelling with various pieces of baby gear on our laps in the back. We looked like the Clampets, heading on the 5 up to Beverly Hills. . .just in about 5 decades later.
I can hear the banjo play in my head as we roll the (now) low rider through Long Beach, capturing some of this on video, at least what I can see through the myriad of unnecessary objects atop me.
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