Wonderful daughter was raised by wonderful mom

Dear Miss Manners :Iam the happy mother of an absolutely delightful young woman who is currently in college.

Everyone finds her charm- ing, and I must say I privately thrill at the compliments she often receives, as I raised her nearly entirely on my own. (My husband always worked long hours, and I stayed home and then worked in my daughter’s schools.)

I do claim much of the credit for her sweet disposition — in my own mind, not obnoxiously or out loud.

My mother-in-law, who has never treated me with any amount of kindness, has taken to stating in mixed company that my husband’s cousin was “like a second mother” to my daughter and “helped raise her.”

She says this every time this cousin is around.

I have no clue why the cousin would let this statement go; she knows, as do my husband and I, that she had nothing to do with our daughter’s upbringing.

She merely babysat twice, maybe thrice, before we moved to a different state when our daughter was 3 years old. (My mother-inlaw lived eight states away, had less than nothing to do with my daughter’s upbringing and had no knowledge whatsoever of the goings-on in our household.)

I know I shouldn’t let this bother me, but it just makes my skin crawl. It was no small task to raise such a lovely young lady, and I took this work very seriously.

Is there anything I can say in response to this farcical statement that wouldn’t

make me look like an ogre?

Gentle Reader:

“Yes, Cousin Melba was generous enough to babysit Georgia

when she was little and we lived nearby. Fifteen years later, we

still feel in her debt.”