MOTB > Mommy-in-Law

Chaucer would have called me a modyr in lawe.

What’s a MOTB to do – after the wedding?  I’ve been thinking about that – over three months post nups now. The bride and groom have been pronounced  husband and wife, and the MOTB – has become an “in-law.”  According to Wikipedia, this now gives me a “legal affinity” to the groom,  whatever that means.  I haven’t gained a son; I’ve attained a son-in-law.  I wonder if there is an IRS form for that.

Chaucer would have called me a modyr in lawe. He relates a rather malicious modry in lawe story in The Canterbury Tales, told by a guy (it figures!) on route to the shrine of Thomas Becket.  I don’t remember the sordid details, though I do remember – verbatim -- the first fourteen lines of the Tales. Had to memorize them to pass a required college English course over forty years ago. Memorize and recite. A forgotten objective in today's school curriculums.

Practicing for days in my dorm, I found I could best remember the archaic yet mellifluous Middle English when I sang the words to the tune of Leaving on a Jet Plane, a John Denver song (most popularly covered by Peter Paul and Mary). After stumbling through a few Whan that aprill –s at my official recitation (you had to make a one-on-one appointment with the prof ) I asked her if I could get my guitar – which I had left outside the meeting room – just in case (no pun intended!).

Strumming away, I breezed through the fourteen lines.  Still can.

What tune can I rehearse being an M-in law to, I wonder. Certainly not its namesake song, which I wrote about pre-wedding. I want the lyrics to rate at least a 9, American-Bandstand-wise, and be easy to dance to.  

Welcome to Wedding Central

I have to admit Em's wedding  - less than three weeks away - is too close for the comfort of my being able to put off this or wait till later for that. We're beyond prioritizing. It's do-it-all-now time: the final flower decisions, the DJ song list, the hotel and party count, readings, guest bags.
And that's just this weekend. The storm before the calm - I hope.  I'll  gladly face a frenzy a few weeks before the wedding for a smooth run on October 8.

My tiny house seems to be getting smaller and smaller now that it's Wedding Central. Gowns - the bride's and mine - hang, out of the closet, to avoid wrinkling. Gift boxes are stacked here, cartons of goodies for the candy bar show up there. Baskets are being amassed for the sweets. There's 300 feet of packaged string lights piled on the piano bench. 

Good thing I haven't played the piano in a while. Maybe I'll get it tuned after the wedding.

After the wedding. Now there's a thought that hasn't crossed my mind in a long time. There's got to be a morning after the wedding, right? A quiet break of day when bride and groom are off to Vermont for a  long weekend. When the to-do lists are all crossed out and the happy hello hugs and kisses have been replaced by  bittersweet goodbyes.

When the Mommy of the Bride becomes the Mommy-in-law.

Oh my!

Better dig out that piano tuner's phone number!              

A Modest MOTB Proposal



Is this a picture of a Moby?

Most married women I have spoken to wouldn’t be comfortable calling their mothers-in-law, “Mom.” without having endearing reasons for the term of endearment. A quick Internet search indicates this is not so in all cultures. 

A Chinese living in Hong Kong reports her countrymen traditionally address mothers-in-law as mom or mother.  The same is true in Pakistan, though it’s more common for older women to address their husbands' mothers by the simple address. The younger Pakistan population  more commonly uses, “Auntie.”



There's actually an entire web discussion that answers the question: How do you address your mother-in-law in your own culture at


 http://ask.metafilter.com/155066/How-do-you-address-your-motherinlaw-in-your-own-culturew.


The apparent fascination with this question makes me wonder why our culture has not come up with generally accepted identifiers for the parents in-law, the way it has granted identifications for other extended family members - especially cousins. My parents' siblings' children are my first cousins. Second cousins are children of first cousins.The countdown of cousins continues to cover ensuing generations. Some of these designators are confusing -- especially when you start dealing the with "removed" cousins. But they are still terms meant to identify family relationships, not evaluate affection toward them. The most helpful "cousin calculator"  I've found online is 


http://www.searchforancestors.com/utility/cousincalculator.html


I especially like this website's dictionary of cousin terms. And it does occur to me that mother-in-law and father-in-law are meant to be just as helpful in designating relationships between family members by marriage, But that" in-law"  part sounds so cold, as does, I admit, the "removed" cousin distinction. But we usually don't have as immediate and regular relationships with "removed" cousins as we do with our in-laws. In-laws, afterall, share grandchildren.
 

So, I propose more user-friendly (with the emphasis on friendly) apellations for parent-in-laws. I wouldn't mind being referred to as Moby, a name derived from a few of the key letters in Mother of the Bride. Moby doesn't compete with the groom's connection to his Mom. Yet, it's not as steeped in legalese as mother-in-law . The Father of the Bride could be Fab. What father-in-law wouldn't mind being referred to as Fab?

Following the same nicknaming pattern, the groom's mom would be Mogy and his dad . . . . .  er. . . . oh well, back to the in-law ID drawing board. 

What's in a name?

My future son-in-law calls me by my first name.

Last week I attended a friend’s retirement party. Past retirees were there. Some, who I had not seen for a while, heard about Em and Ry’s wedding for the first time. I answered the usual questions:

  When?  “First weekend in October.”

  Where? “The Barn at Wesleyan”

  Who? “A college friend. Dated after they graduated. Been engaged over two years.”

Then, sitting down to dinner, a question I didn’t expect surfaced. A colleague  I had not seen for years asked “What will he call you?”

                “Call me?” I wasn’t sure what she meant.

                “Yes, how do you want your daughter’s fiancé to address you?”

                As I considered the question, other marrieds at the table began to respond. “My mother-in-law  wants to be called ‘Mom.’  I always feel funny, but she asked me to,” said one.

                “I try not to call mine anything,” said another. We  laughed . But this tablemate wasn’t trying to be funny.

All this reminded me of how I came to call my mother-in-law “Mrs. Hayden” when Larry and I wed.

Of course, it was a different time – over thirty years ago – and place, in the sphere of social graces. Some behaviors considered rude then are considered quite civil now. This includes for women – the once scandalous act of baring one’s shoulders in church, and for men – the disrespect  wearing a hat at the dinner table use to convey.

But I didn’t call my dear mother-in-law “Mrs. Hayden” because etiquette guru Emily Post instructed me to. I did it because she always referred to her mother-in-law (no longer living) as Mrs. Hayden. How could a daughter-in-law go wrong if she did what her mother-in-law did?

Getting back to my dinner table friends, I answered the question first posed to me. “When Emily and Ryan were just friends, he always called me Mrs. Hayden. But since they’re engaged, he's made a point of calling me ‘Laura.’ “

             “So he refers to you by  your first name,” my friend said.

             “Yes,” I said with caution, not sure what she was getting at.

“That’s good,” she said. For some time, she had  been making  informal observations of how young in-laws address elder in-laws.  Her highly unscientific but nevertheless intriguing finding was “When they refer to each other by name, they get along better.”

A “which came first- the chicken or the egg” conversation followed across the table. Did the first-name address lead to respect or mutual respect lead to the first-name calling? No one could say for sure. But I did say, “After I had children it got easier. I started calling my mother-in-law Meme, like the grandkids.

                “And what will your grandchildren call you?” my friend asked.

What will become of the mother-of-the-bride?

 I will go to bed  October 7, 2011 the Mother-of-the-Bride- to-be, and I will wake up the next  morning  about to become a cultural anomaly. Between  the time I  slip out from layers of crisp sheets on Emily and Ryan’s wedding day,   to the time I slip  back under them ( I expect no less than twenty hours later) I will add yet  another chapeau to my hat rack of kinships.  I will don the millinery of a MOTHER-IN-LAW.  A Pill Box, I suppose, by  society’s expectation.

If  you’re my age, the word incites an ear-jerk reaction, right to the sound of  “mother-in-law” being crooned  in  a deep  baritone  and then echoed  in a slightly higher range,. That's the way Ernie K-Doe performed it with  back-up singer  Benny Spellman in 1961.  In May of that year “Mother-in-law” spent one week topping the Billboard magazine Hot 100 List – slipping  in between  a week  or so of Ricky Nelson’s “Travelin’ Man ”  and Del Shannon’s  month-long  reign with  "Runaway".  Yet,  just a  few  days  on the charts was all  the“Mother-in-law-ing” it took for my generation to transmute the  image of  mommies- of- the-wedded  from mother hens  to clay pigeons.

How could they not become the immediate target of cultural derision after these cynical superlatives  - sung with gospel fervor  -  aired throughout America?

The worst person I know  (Mother-In-Law Mother-In-Law)
She worries me so  (Mother-In-Law Mother-In-Law)
If she leaves us alone we would have a happy home
Sent from down below (Mother-In-Law Mother-In-Law)

Out and out name calling ("Satan should be her name") starts the second stanza, which may have been the groove that raised Dick Clark's eyebrow . The squeaky clean Sixties King of Pop refused to play the tune on American Bandstand when the song came out in ’61.

But I can't put all the blame on Ernie. He only sang the words. New Orleans music legend Allen Toussaint penned the hateful  lyrics. Musician, composer, and producer, this icon has collaborated with everyone from Bonnie Raitt to The Rolling Stones, Lee Dorsey, The Pointer Sisters and Glen Campbell. But, apparently Toussiant has never been in cahoots with the mother of a wife – or a wife - for that matter. (for there are no references in career biographies to him ever being married).

Not so with Ernie – who was the marrying kind twice, according to record. Not much is said about his first marriage. But, after a decade or two of down and out years, he met Antoinette Fox, a K-Doe fan who managed a bar in New Orleans,where he spent time. She got K-Doe back onstage and, in 1996, down the aisle. By then the couple had reopened a rundown club as the Ernie K-Doe Mother-in-Law Lounge, and it quickly caught on with K-Doe’s fans, especially when he began performing.  As an added flourish, K-Doe’s new mother-in -law would appear onstage while he sang his signature song.

Pretty nice of the song’s incendiary namesake, wouldn’t you say?