Most families begin their struggle from combining their age-long career with tending for their new spouse. They'd have to adjust to compulsory tasks like cooking dishes....doing laundry...making love....and of course, in-laws.
They visit during a weekend. It is your only free time. They are at the door. You meet them with the best warmth you can muster.
"Come in." You polish that request with a hundred kilowatts smile. You cannot do any less. They are in-laws-- family members who do very little talking but can easily misunderstand your body language as utter disrespect.
You are the wife. You saunter into the kitchen to fix them a dish. You throw in a little banter from across as stew boils. Keeping the atmosphere apomp is the litmus test of a good wife.
You start about how grateful you are to be married to their son. How wonderful being married is. They seat in the parlor rendering elderly advice on how your excitement is "normal" after a few expletives like "Errr" and " Hmmm".
It is excusable. They have once been newly married. And while you catch your breath to accept how they watered down your passionate story-telling with the loose term "normal", they are quiet again; noting the patina of dust on the louvres, the nylon wrapper not well placed in the bin, the scanty dining furniture and of course, the quality of the upholstery.
Food is ready. Your sweaty body takes the dishes to the table. You invite them over. They approach like visitors while you try your best to make them feel at home.
Somehow, the food doesn't taste as close to what they are used to. They give you a harmless lecture on "how to do it next time". That's how their son likes it too.
You nod in pliant acceptance. "These in-laws mustn't think I'm unteachable." You resolve to be unquestioning.
But you leave the table feeling incompetent. Your husband said nothing in your defense. He just smiled like a drugged foul.
The day is over. You want to talk to him about how his mum didn't help you in the kitchen; how uncomfortable her quizzing eyes was over the meal; how you didn't feel like a daughter around her.
Then you get a name call. It's your mother-in-law. She wants to stay till the next morning! You cannot refuse. " You are welcome to stay as long as you want, mummy" you say that with a half-hearted chuckle.
You didn't mean it. But how dare you say otherwise!
Your father in-law sticks by his lousy wife. He is staying too. You have a pair of visitors you must impress...a weekend of theatre and drama!
In-laws...how harmful and yet needful. They teach us how careful we must be around our kids' spouses when we become in-laws too.
But don't we just become all we disdained about our in-laws?
