Like mother, like daughter
On reflection, I played the whole summer wrong. I can see it now. It kicked off on a pretty good note: I got pregnant. Then I thought it’d be a good idea to become embroiled with the bank for a minor loan, which turned into a major headache, and an unceremonious reminder that, once and for all, we will never be proper, eligible-for-loan types.
Then I decided a little bit of home improvement was better than none at all, not realising that there is no such thing as “a little” when it comes to tearing your house limb from limb. The next calamitous decision was a sojourn at my mother’s house for eight-to-ten weeks.
What I didn’t bank on was just how much this interlude would feel exactly like crawling back up the birth canal and being held captive, prisoner-ofwar style, inside her womb, with the umbilical cord tightly wrapped around my neck while being berated for wearing my hair up instead of down. I should grudgingly state I’m grateful for the rent-free accommodation. Though if one could pay rent in anguish resulting from emotional blackmail, casual gaslighting, and pass-remarkable comments, then, I think she did OK out of the situation.
The legacy of what I’ve come to think of as ShitFest 2016 will probably be the healing that my marriage will now be forced to undergo. As much as I felt like the put-upon one this summer — no one ever needs to be in proximity to their mother as an adult, especially when one is heavily pregnant — I realise that Himself is dealing with the most emotional fallout from the turbulent summer.
He has the hollow look in his eyes of a man that has seen his future, and it is not the rosy, cosy image of domestic bliss that he had envisioned. Any man who is fortunate enough to have a motherin-law (coincidentally, the phrase itself is an anagram for ‘woman Hitler’; I tell you this merely as an interesting aside, nothing more) should know better than to examine or analyse this woman too closely, for she is his destiny.
The mother-in-law is like a peek into the future for any man. Want to know if your wife’s appearance is going to weather the kids and the mortgage and the stress? Fearful that she might be getting a bit jowly? Starting to suspect that she’s not as emotionally hinged as you once thought? Just take a long look at the mother-in-law, because that, my friend, is what you’re going to be living with in the decades to come.
As hard as it is to accept, seemingly, it is inevitable. All women become their mothers; that is their tragedy, or in this case, Himself’s tragedy. After months together, it has become clear that they don’t really get on. This doesn’t bode well for our marriage.
An entire summer with Herself was a harsh foreshadowing of what is to come for Himself, and I fear he won’t shake this PTSD. He has begun to self-medicate with treats like this divine caramel slice as we hit the home stretch of the living-with-mother-in-law period. Who can blame him?