I’ve just returned home from a book event in Boston where I met some 60 extraordinary, bright and engaging women – most of them current or former mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law. I never know what to expect after I give a talk on It’s Either Her or Me and then open it up to discussion. Wow.
The stories abounded.
More than one turned the room into a continuum of raucous laughter but I think the mother-in-law story that may have taken the cake, so to speak, went like this.
A lovely woman who had been married for decades and whose mother-in-law has since passed away, told us about her wedding night. After a fun and elaborate party she and her new husband slipped into the suite they had reserved for the night. Expecting a night of privacy, intimacy and great sex, they were taken aback when they flipped on the lights.
Sprawled on the bed in full splendor, wearing an emerald green silk dressing gown with matching slippers trimmed in boa feathers, laid the mother-in-law. Arm stretched dramatically across her forehead, tears streaming down her face, she cried, “I no longer have a son!”
“Wait, it gets worse,” told our storyteller in the midst of “OMG’s” and hilarity.
The following morning she and her new husband left for their much longed-for honeymoon. It promised to be memorable. It was. When they showed up at their hotel they found the mother-in-law had already checked in.
Amazingly, despite all of the intrusiveness of her husband’s mother, this woman says she really was quite fond of her.
See, there is hope!
