The Bitch is Back

Most mothers teach their children that if they’ve nothing nice to say, then saying nothing is preferable.  My own mother, however, taught me that if there is truth worth telling, to tell it. 

So Ima gonna tell, and youra gonna listen.  Here’s an open letter.

Dear Mother-in-Law With the Quintessential Chicken-Headed Haircut that for Some Reason You Paid For,

Next time you whine about not having a closer relationship, don’t preface it by saying that you “made a big mistake” by “agreeing” to our wedding.  I know this comes as a great shock to you, but we never asked for, nor required, your permission. 

Next time you hijack your son’s entire wedding and ruin any chance at a healthy relationship with your daughter-in-law, at least put up a fucking picture.  It’s called “follow-through.”  No time or space to hang a portrait, you say?  The wedding was eight months ago and you’ve got a 13,000 square foot mansion.  The fact that you refuse to acknowledge the photographic evidence of our marriage in no way means it did not happen. 

Next time your grown, married son lets you know he’s having a child, try to say something other than “Oy.” 

Next time you have a shot at therapy, for god’s sake TAKE IT.  While difficult, it’s not impossible to treat Narcissistic Personality Disorder.  There are medications, and if those don’t work, I will happily commit you for extensive treatment.

No, you are not merely a “Jewish mother” who simply “can’t help but be involved”, nor any number of benign, stereotypical caricatures with which you identify to make excuses for your inappropriate and infantile behavior.  Really, you’re just an asshole who has had her butt kissed for far too long.  The sooner you cop to it, the sooner I can let you out of this armbar.

Your comments about “the working-class” are anything but elegant.  This is the problem with the nouveau-riche.  You forget that your parents could not afford a bed, and that you and your husband lived in their basement until you were thirty.  Your elitism stems from self-loathing.  Your ostentatiousness is a desperate attempt to compensate.  Pull your head out of your ass.

The night you scolded your son in public for expressing an ambition not in line with your wishes, you failed to recognize that you were lecturing a grown man and his wife.  Plenty of other people did notice, however.  They stared, and it made even your diamonds look ugly.

Next time, try to save the remark, “Good boy!  You finished your plate!” for a four-year-old.

Next time your son attempts an adult conversation, try not to fly into a personal attack deliberately aimed at making him feel guilty and small.  Try not to become enraged at his adult communication or begin slinging veiled threats.  By the way, thank you very much for wishing us a happy life – we shall have one.  You, on the other hand, are quite unhappy and I feel sorry for your utter lack of joy, empathy, or ability to be accountable for your own fulfillment.

In Summary (take a note if you have to):

I. Personally. Have. Had. It.

He may be your son, but he is my husband, my lover, my best friend and the father of my child.  According to my calculations, I have you outnumbered by the sheer nature of my being.  There will be no further contact until you can act your age and show up with an honest apology and a little fucking respect.  Until then.

The Queen is dead; Long live the Queen!

The Wedding Ch. 4 – Odds and Ends

The Photographer:

I’ve seen plenty of wedding albums, and most I cannot tell between.  Stiff portraits, noses in bouquets, family shots, bride putting on makeup, yes yes.  What I wanted was something different; something with personality, artistry, character, movement.  I searched vigorously for names of photographers whose portfolios I liked and, as requested, submitted them to my mother-in-law.  One by one, she methodically crossed them off her master list; this one because she didn’t ‘get the right feeling’, that one because she didn’t like the sound of his email, another because he seemed (get this) to be available, and yet another because she literally did not like his hair.

Her end choice was a famous photography company that is often featured on bridal television for reasons I will never understand.  The photographer himself seemed to be high on methamphetamines, and was almost punched by my husband for not being able to keep his nose out of my neck, where he was supposedly admiring my perfume.  And the pictures?  Stiff portraits, noses in bouquets, family shots and a bride putting on makeup.

The Cocktail Hour:

My mother-in-law decided that she must throw a cocktail hour before the ceremony.  After considering for a while, my husband and I decided strongly against it.  We simply wanted a sober crowd for the vows, a little bit of reverence for a measly 20 minutes.  Then people could get as drunk as they wanted!  We explained this to her and she seemed to understand.  “Done,” she said.  We asked if she really got it.  “Of course!  Why would you have to ask me twice?”

Why, indeed.  Two weeks later, she phoned to ask what kind of wine we wanted served before the wedding.  The woman took advantage of my flabbergasted silence to express how it simply must – MUST – be done, no way around it.  I will not repeat the raging profanities traveling loudly from my mouth to her ear; I will say that the sweet, accomodating daughter-in-law everyone hoped for went away that day and is still on vacation.  She has stood a little further from me ever since. 

The Rehearsal Dinner:

Lamb.  That’s all I have to say. 

The Registry:

Six months of fielding phone calls from my husband’s mother, insisting we change our choice of knife set, luggage, linens and appliances to the brands of her liking.   Because nothing else will do, no?

The Wedding Cake:

Despite numerous reminders to keep the top layer of the cake for my husband and I, we arrived for brunch the day after the wedding to find that my in-laws had eaten it for an early breakfast.

I could continue, but fear the memories will make me homocidal.  There is one thing amid the crap that remains sacred, though.  I was such at wit’s end before the wedding that our officiant, a wonderful wonderful woman, made an amazing suggestion.  If we really wanted something special only for us – something that not even his mother could hijack – she would marry us a few days before the wedding date.  And that’s exactly what we did.  Three days prior to the public circus, we stood in front of our fireplace and exchanged rings and vows; my husband in his favorite dress shirt and me in a lily white minidress, all of us barefoot and determined to retain the real spirit of this thing. 

When we stood in the garden for the formal ceremony that weekend – with the blue flower arrangements, as the cover band was setting up, and in front of the two hundred guests who had already been drinking – there was nothing that could ruin my wedding.  We were already married. 

I still delight in that secret.

The Wedding Ch. 3 – Therapy

Month Four of the engagement: 

We had really started butting heads on wedding details, so I distanced myself from my mother-in-law.  I needed space to do my calm breathing exercises.  I had grown tired of her endless “assistance”, constant reminders that I needed her along when I did hair and makeup trials or gown fittings.  I couldn’t possibly make the right choices on my own. 

One day, she finally invited me to lunch and I was out of excuses.  After the initial gossip and pleasantries, her face turned serious.  “I’ve wanted to talk to you about something,” she said.  “I feel as if I don’t see you enough.  You don’t call me enough, and it also makes me upset when you don’t respond to all of my emails.”

I immediately know she’s been to see a therapist.  Her ability to form reasonable statements on her own is never this good.  Astounded, I explained that a) I worked full time and b) I was sorry that I did not acknowledge every crappy joke, cute puppy picture or alarmist health warning she emailed throughout the week.  Yes, I would try harder, and how wonderful that she’s found a therapist she liked.

Unfortunately, her travails into self-awareness were short-lived.  Two weeks later, she said that she’d just had her last session with the therapist.  When asked why she stopped, she replied with a satisfied shrug, “I have nothing more to talk about!”  She meant it.  She was fixed!  And she smiled into her soup.

I felt a kick underneath the table.  It was my husband’s foot.  It was saying, “are you getting this?”  This is precisely the reason that we sit next to, rather than across from, each other at dinner: so that our feet can talk in code when our mouths are bound by manners.  We spent the whole drive home parroting his mother, alternately laughing and being terrified that she actually believed herself.

Knowing that she was no longer retaining anyone who would tell her the truth was depressing, to say the least.  There are few things worse than a narcissistic personality who has ditched her therapist.  Two things that come to mind are the atomic bomb and abusing small animals, but that’s all I can come up with.

Coming up…

You’re going to get somebody else to do your makeup, right?

and

You know you can still back out.

The Wedding Ch. 2 – Colors

Fiery bouquets.  Peaches, mangos, creams and reds.  Two o’clock ceremony in the garden.  Handmade placecards.  Jazz band.  Cellist.

And then I woke up.

I think the biggest mistake made with my wedding was accepting the offer to hold it my in-laws’ estate.  I thought naively, who wouldn’t want to get married on the sprawling, manicured acreage with a Tuscan mansion in the background and black swans in the lake?  Anyone in their right mind, that’s who.  Oh Elvis, I apologize for my stupidity; I truly do.

Deciding on a home wedding put the ball in my mother-in-law’s court – her tennis court, to be exact, where the reception would be held.  As we hiked down the lawn toward the court in the initial stages of planning, I described to her my color-scheme, flowers, and how I’d seen the perfect bridesmaid dresses to fit right in.  She said nothing, until we arrived at the tennis court.  With a sweep of her arm, she said, “But look at the morninglory.  It’s everywhere, and it’s blue.”

Okay.  So?

“Well the colors that you want are not going to match the morninglory.  But it’s your wedding, you can have your colors clash if you like…”  This is the way she usually framed her distaste, beneath thinly veiled insults that implied that I knew nothing.  A small sampling of my favorites were Well, it’s not what I would choose… and Trust me, I know what works… and Really?  You would do that?  Oh.

She went on to remind me that alllllllll the brides this season were doing baby blue, which coincidentally would go PERFECTLY with her morninglory, and didn’t I think that would be FABULOUS?  Now, I like blue – in things like sky and water.  But in a wedding?  So drab and tame and… oh, yes, wealthy Jew.  Should be perfect!  I retreated back to square one, solemnly removing every Post-It from my wishes and turning my magazines back to the table of contents.

Little by little, all of my wishes for my wedding were subverted.  The 2 o’clock garden ceremony became 5 o’clock, the cellist became a harpist, the roses became blue hydrangeas.  The jazz quartet became an obnoxious cover band the in-laws enjoyed, and the bride became increasingly and at regular intervals, aware that she was not the reason for the festivities, but rather a convenient excuse.

The Wedding Ch. 1 – The first three months

Like little girls often do, I always pictured my wedding as a fairytale event, replete with pink roses, sparkly lights, garden butterflies and the intimate, homegrown touch of having planned and executed every tiny, beautiful detail myself.

Then I met my mother-in-law, and that dream was shattered.  Hijacked is a better word.  Kidnapped and smuggled onto a train heading for a collapsed mine shaft, perhaps.  The sixth months of my engagement were made of a series of rude awakenings, sleepless nights and astonished silences as I watched what was supposed to be the happiest day of my life become a pageant of ostentatious crap – to which my opinions meant nothing.

It’s seven months later, and I’m still sore.  Here, as threatened, and in sections, is The Wedding. 

Two weeks into the engagement:

My mother-in-law is obsessed with my ring.  I am too, of course, as it is huge, it is beautiful and most of all, it is MINE.  One evening, we arrive to play a little Mexican Train.  The woman cannot take her eyes off the diamond, and numerous times puts down her dice to lick her fingers, grab my hand and wipe from the ring a speck of dust.  Charming.  I suppose she thinks that since we are going to be family, I should be comfortable with her saliva.

Later that evening she decided that the diamond sat too high on its perch.  She demanded to take it to the jeweler from whence it came, to have it snuggled deeper into its prongs.  I strenously objected to the folly.  What kind of mother-in-law-to-be takes a woman’s ring and has it reset to her own liking?  I mean, really.

My mother-in-law-to-be, that’s who.  I cried, yelled and pleaded with this woman to leave my ring alone, but she scoffed at my wishes.  What could I, a humble Gentile who actually worked for a living, possibly know about diamonds?  This is when I became intimately familiar with the phrase, “You trust me, don’t you?”  Exhausted, I said yes, unwittingly opening the Pandora’s Box of her manipulative glee. 

Two months into the engagement:

I decide that it’s time to hunt for dresses.  Nicole Miller designs some fabulously simple and beautiful wedding dresses, and my mother-in-law volunteers to pack our overnight bags into her miniscule trunk and zip us down to Sunset to do some shopping.  I try on a parade of gorgeous frocks, each one critiqued with disfavor.  Eventually, my mother-in-law grows tired of criticizing the dresses and decides to instead criticize me.  Falling from her loving lips that day:

You have the body of a little boy. 

and its second cousin,

I happen to like the flat look.

Near tears, I throw in the towel and we decide to go for dinner before checking into the hotel for the night.  Dinner is even more pleasant, if you find stupidity at all interesting.  By the end of the evening, I know far more than necessary about useless things, like my fiancee’s ex-girlfriends.  I also know how my mother-in-law enjoys calling her other daughter-in-law by the name of Fat Pig, and also that she told her son to not get involved with me.

She must have mistaken me for an idiot’s confessional.  The full dysfunctional reality of Jewish Motherhood reveals itself, and for a second I consider running.  But I don’t run.  I am so looking forward to a lifetime with this woman. 

Three months into the engagement:

Ah, the bridal shower.  Such fond memories.  Read Hello, My Name Is… below for all the dirt.

Stay tuned for the next installment: angry emails, color schemes and… the photographer!