Ellie Slott Fisher

I know I always harp on how uncommunicative boys are as they get older, but this personality defect ends up effecting both the wife and the mother.

The other night as I flipped through the channels, I was drawn into a new sitcom, “The Middle.” The mother, played by Patricia Heaton, is running the snack bar at her high school-aged son’s basketball game. A pretty cheerleader named Morgan stops at her table and moons about her boyfriend who’s on the team. With that news, she points to none other than Axel, Heaton’s son. How long have they been going out? Six weeks. “He leaves me love notes daily,” the girl tells a shocked Heaton, who had no idea her son even had a girlfriend.

If you think such a premise is preposterous, then I’m pretty sure you aren’t the mother of a son. Yet.

Heaton goes home and tells her husband about the girl, and says she doesn’t trust her. (Girlfriends can relate to how they have to prove themselves over and over again before being accepted by his mom.) The doorbell rings. It’s Morgan who, being the perfect companion for their son, is carrying a basket of homemade muffins and says something like, “I know you have a ton of questions and I’m here to answer them. But for starters, we don’t have sex.”

Instantly, Heaton’s distrust turns to LOVE.

So what happens next? Most moms could have written the script. The girl breaks up with the son, who is left brokenhearted and, for a brief moment, seeks out his mom for comfort. This hasn’t happened since the days he thought girls were yucky.

The time is fleeting though and Heaton knows it. She also realizes that the next time her son has a girlfriend, she’ll still be the last to know.

Meanwhile Morgan, as the girlfriend, knows that she has to show his mother that she can be as nurturing and loving as she is. Hence, the muffins. But she also knows that the second she breaks off the relationship with the son, even if he’s the reason for the it, Mom will find fault with her.

Imagine what would happen if the boys actually opened up to both women?

I know it’s rare to find some woman somewhere who isn’t in some way affected by another woman connected to a male in her life. Even a woman who only has daughters still has to face the mother and/or sister of her sons-in-law. Sorry ladies, there is no getting away from it. But to make you feel a little better, you need to meet Crystal, whose blog (Crystal & Company) is very, very funny. She wrote a book review of It’s Either Her or Me and illustrated it with a photograph of her little boy wearing a T-shirt with the book cover on it. Oh, and he was reading the book. So maybe I’m a little prejudiced. But seriously, Crystal has five sons. That’s right FIVE. And although they are years away from discovering girls (warning: years turn into months, months turn into days, and poof, where did she come from?) she is already considering how to handle her daughters-in-law. She will turn herself into their BFF, take them shopping and offer to watch the grandkids while her as of yet only imaginary daughters-in -law run errands. She’s also already expecting to have to move Christmas from her home to her daughters-in-law, and accept that they may very well move far away, taking her grandchildren with them. But as she says, if she plays her cards right, she’ll be encouraged to visit all the time and baby-sit her grandkids.

With this attitude, Crystal will do just fine.

By the way, besides being the mother of five little boys, Crystal is also the eldest sister of three brothers, two of whom are married and one who is about to be.

So just when you think you have it really tough with YOUR mother-in-law or sister-in-law or daughter-in-law, think of Crystal. And take a look at that adorable little boy wearing the T-shirt and reading the book and you’ll understand exactly why Crystal has already figured it out.