I love my snowbirds: My in-laws are here to stay
It was Monday, Dec. 20, and we weren’t expecting my in-laws for another four days. But then the phone rang.
“We’re making really great time. The weather’s been terrific, and there’s hardly any traffic. We’re in a town called—” My father-in-law paused to double check. “Uh, Lakeside? Have you heard of it?”
“Lakeside?!?” I said to Sam, when he relayed the information. “But—they’re supposed to be in Santa Fe right now! What the hell?”
“They’ll be here by lunch time,” Sam said. I blinked at him in silence. I started to hyperventilate. “But I’ll tell them to come at dinner,” he said. I was getting dizzy, seeing spots and auras and tracers. I genuinely like my inlaws, but I was dreading this visit.
“What do you think? Is 4:30 OK?” I nodded, and sat down on the couch using a hand to steady myself. I asked Sam to bring me an ice pack for my head.
And so it was that my husband’s parents—along with my sister-in-law and one cute but yappy lap dog—left blizzards and black ice in their rear view mirror and began their first winter as snowbirds. It was now only the distance between East County and the College Area separating me from a two-and-a-half month visit.
No, that’s no typo; it’s my reality. A two-and-a-half-month visit! With my in-laws!
Good Christ.
The cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead once said, “Of all the peoples whom I have studied, from city dwellers to cliff dwellers, I always find that at least 50 percent would prefer to have at least one jungle between themselves and their mothers-in-law.”
Now, I don’t need a jungle between my in-laws and me. But one plane ticket is about right. I’m the Queen of the Short Visit, Master of the Three-Day Weekend. I can tolerate just about anything for 72 hours, but give me an entire season of my mother-in-law’s perfume and my furry father-in-law shirtlessly sunning himself in my back yard? Well, then. You can just consider me a wild card.
It’s worthy of mention that my husband and I haven’t lived within 1,500 miles of a parental unit for more than 20 years, a choice with which we are both very content. We visit with my mother twice a year, and she and I chat on the phone once every three or four weeks. It works for us.
My in-laws, on the other hand, would like to talk daily. And visit often. And hug and kiss and generally enjoy each other in person, all the time. This is uncomfortable territory for a girl who digs her obligation-free existence. Family dinners? What is that? It’s accurate to say I went into this whole we’re-coming-out-for-the-winter arrangement with a little bit of apprehension.
OK, so maybe that’s downplaying it. I’ve been a little bit more like a 4-year-old having a temper tantrum, complete with foot stomping and fist pounding. It’s not been graceful.
But back to their first night: Their arrival was as smooth as 17 clowns piling out of a Volkswagen Beetle right in the middle of a meditation retreat. The cosmos was disrupted with much exclaiming and fawning. There was tearful hugging. And kissing and touching and stroking of hair and multiple expressions of how exciting it was to have So! Much! Time! Together!
There was a dog-butt-sniffing frenzy and then a small territorial battle. There were the noise-making toys brought cross-country for Ruby and the excited screaming over a much-anticipated Barbie Bus.
There was the kitchen takeover and general overcrowding of our little home, already overstuffed with Christmas paraphernalia. It was pandemonium. It was sensory overload. It was everything I’d imagined it would be, and I knew I couldn’t deal for another two months. I poured myself a cocktail and stretched a thin smile across my face.
During the coming weeks, my in-laws settled into a little house they rented in South Park and Sam and I set a few boundaries—he, of course, being more tactful about it than I. When my mother-in-law happily chirped that they’d booked the house for next year, it was through clenched teeth that I said I wasn’t ready to talk about it just yet.
My mother-in-law ignored that and went about her business. She and my father-in-law began to get familiar with what they now call “our ’hood.” They introduced themselves to shop owners and neighbors; if you live or work in the area, I’ll bet money you already know Tommy and Marsha from Wisconsin.
My mother-in-law signed up for knitting workshops. My father-in-law walked the beaches. He’s pushed well beyond his fear of Southern California freeway driving, and just the other day, I watched him top out at 70 mph—I didn’t know he could go over 50—while talking on his cell phone. I was so proud of him.
My sister-in-law does her thing, sometimes with us, sometimes without. But what matters is that they’re all making their own life here, and the presence of a routine has made together-time more wonderful than I’d expected.
And I’m not saying this because of their willingness to babysit, any time, for free! Dear Lord, Sweet Baby Jesus in the sky, the free babysitting is glorious! Just last Thursday, they picked Ruby up after school so I could go to the gym. When I got home, the dishes were done, the floors were swept, the laundry was folded and stacked and our windows were washed. I had to point out to my mother-in-law that she’d left a streak on one of the windows, to which she said, “Oh, fuck you!” God, how I love her.
My temper tantrum is over and this is my public apology for my private bad behavior. I have decided the good far outweighs the bad when it comes to living with only a 10-mile concrete jungle between my in-laws and me. I just can’t wait until they make it permanent.
(As published in San Diego CityBeat.)
Celebrating
This weekend was good. There was a lot of cheese, if you catch my drift:
And not to rub it in (Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, Paris, ahem) but there was quite a bit of this:
Which was perfect for our annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Day neighborhood clean up.
We worked in the rain last year.
For the third year in a row, we got together with our friends, put on some gloves and worked with our kids to make our community a better place. Later in the day, I did Ruby’s hair—getting her ready to go back to school tomorrow after four weeks off—while Sam cooked a traditional southern meal of smothered chicken, rice and veggies. My in-laws came bearing corn bread and my mother-in-law baked a buttermilk pie, one of MLK’s favorites. That is, at least, according to the Internets.
When we’d finished eating and the dishes were done (courtesy of my father-in-law), we all sat together and watched Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech in all of it’s 17 minutes and 28 seconds of still-pertinent glory. Indeed, this is no time “to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism,” but rather to pay close attention and continue to work tirelessly toward the realization of his dream.
Nobody needs to see this, but you’re gonna look anyway, I know it
My newly retired in-laws arrived during December—four days earlier than planned! yipee!—for their first winter as “snow birds.” They’re staying until March 1st, though not with us, thank God. That, more than any climate change or falling dead birds, would signify End Times, fo sho. After two-and-a-gulp!-half months here, they’ll leave us and head back to the land of squeaky cheese curds and commentary that often includes some version of oh-yah-hey-dere, howzit-by-youuu?
This new arrangement has not been without it’s bumps for me, but I’m trying to focus on all the good stuff, most specifically the free babysitting and the reality that everything my husband’s folks do comes from a place of love. Still. I haven’t lived in the same city as a parent in almost 20 years and I dig it that way. I talk to my mother once every few weeks. I love her but I don’t need a whole lot more than that and neither does she.
Things are a wee bit different on the Belfer side of the family, however, and the obligation this new arrangement lends is…uncomfortable for me. I’m trying to be grown-up about it but I short circuit a lot; if you see me twitching, that is why. And they love me despite these seizures, which says so, so much about them. Truly. In fact, I think it says, Oh, honey! We’re just a coupla gluttons for punishment, yah-hay-dere.
There’s my mother-in-law. Isn’t she cute??? Just hanging out in my backyard, browsing the overpriced sweaters in the Boden catalogue…WAIT!…What is?…What is that in the foreground, you wonder? Is it a wombat? Is it another Brett Favre body part?
Why, no. As we are all well aware by now, Number 4′s parts aren’t that—ahem—massive. That, my friends, would be my father-in-law’s shoulder. His very furry shoulder. Here’s the very furry rest of him:
Yup. There he is. That is my father-in-law sitting on the table on our back patio like it was a toilet, reading my New Yorker and getting a little sunlight on his body. Well. As much sunlight as can possibly reach the forest floor, anyway. Fortunately for you, I’m not posting the pictures of his hairy “nibbles,” photos Ruby begged me to take, photos that have no business existing. You can thank me in the comments after you gather your composure.
Upon being forced to look at what could very well be Sam’s and therefore my reality someday, I asked my father-in-law: “So, did you get all this extra body hair as you got older or…have you always been…like…this?”
He nodded his head and said quietly, “I’ve always been like this.”
“Whew!” I let there be no mystery as to the scope of my relief.
Then he looked up at me from behind his glasses, and gave me the Holy Fuck You Are So On My Last Nerve intimidation glare he used to give his high school students when they got out of line. He claims it always stopped them in their tracks.
But if he really wanted to scare the shit out of them, he should have just taken off his shirt.
Hypothetically speaking: Resolutions that I’m not going to make
As far as I’m concerned, New Year’s resolutions are for other people. You want to make enough of them to fill a Torah-length scroll? Good for you. Way to be ambitious. I, on the other hand, never make any. I don’t need that kind of pressure. The way I see it, failure hurts less when you aim low. If it’s suffering and self-flagellation I want, I’ll let eight weeks slip by between bikini waxes.
However. When a flight attendant offered a free cocktail to the passenger with the most creative resolution during a recent flight, I whipped out my pen. It may have been disingenuous to participate, seeing as I had zero intention of actually seeing mine through. But I’m competitive and I wanted a whisky. Mostly, I’m competitive.
The judging resulted in a four-way tie.
Two people promised to feed the homeless and do good for the downtrodden and blah-dee-blah—fairly vague and accountability-free goals, if you ask me. Another winner planned to travel on Alaska Airlines 50 times during 2011. Clearly, this lady was the class suck up, the one who always sat in the front row with her hand up and a ready answer. She was the one who volunteered to help the teacher pass out the exam sheets.
And then there was the woman in seat 9B who promised “to be more compassionate toward all the mutants who seemed never to have been through an airport security check point before, like the sedated lady with a lapcat and two teenage traveling companions who—more concerned with the perfect placement of their Justin Bieber coifs—couldn’t be bothered to help their molasses-impersonating basket case of a mother unload her 17 bins of crap.”
Is it wrong to quote myself ? And so it was—as Sam and I sipped on free Crown Royal during the last hour of our flight, basking in the glow of my win—that I proceeded to compile a list of resolutions I would make if I were a resolution maker. Which I still am not. But if I were, 2011 would be the year that:
• I would be on time for everything, including bill payment, starting my period and deadlines (waves sheepishly to editor).
• I would brush my teeth and floss after every meal.
• I would open and sort through my stack of mail on a daily basis rather than piling it up on every household surface indefinitely.
• Instead of running on fumes, I would fill my car up with gas whenever it gets down to the quarter-tank mark so that when Armageddon or Rainmageddon or Whatevermageddon happens, I’d be prepared.
• I might even stock my trunk with a gallon of water, a flashlight, an emergency blanket and some canned beans. I’d be sort of like a Mormon, only without the magic underpants and self-righteousness.
• Speaking of beans, I would stop kvetching about how the taco shop screwed up my burrito again, even as I ate my burrito. Instead of ruining the meal for everybody, I would take it back to the counter and ask for it to be fixed.
• I would ask nicely.
• I would try to pretend, for the benefit of my friends who insist on owning them, that I like cats.
• In addition, I would quit making remarks about how the best place for cats is cuddled up next to a bunch of stones in a burlap sack at the bottom of the San Diego River.
• I would respond in a most heartfelt-regretful manner to hate mail from cat lovers.
• I would donate the proceeds of every future column to the Feral Cat Coalition.
• (Ha ha ha ha ha— yeah, right. That totally isn’t a resolution I would ever make. Fuck the Feral Cat Coalition.)
• I would swear less.
• Rather than secretly enjoying the melancholy for the angst-riddled teenage days of a simple country girl mocked by cheerleaders, I would change the dial on my car radio whenever a Taylor Swift song is played.
• I would put more money away for my daughter’s future.
• I wouldn’t regale the telemarketer from the Democratic National Committee with an itemized list of reasons why I’ll never donate another penny to the Democrats while also antagonizing her with repeated requests for a donation to my child’s college fund.
• I would simply hang up on her instead.
• I wouldn’t hold a grudge against our college neighbors for taking the parking space directly in front of our house.
• I would buy only one pair of shoes all year. OK, probably two. It’s good to be realistic when writing resolutions.
• I would believe in unicorns and the fundamental goodness in all humans, even greedy bankers and those who shop at Michael’s—like the woman in front of me this past holiday season who waited until her subtotal flashed on the cash register before holding up the entire check-out line while a manager procured for her the green spray paint she forgot to grab.
• I wouldn’t, in such situations as the one above, take a photo of the annoying person hemming-and-hawing over which hue of spray paint to purchase, send it to my only Christian friend and tell her she was right, there is a hell after all and it is called Michael’s.
• I would resolve to never set foot in a Michael’s again.
• I would give my husband more blowjobs. The annual birthday / anniversary / Christmas schedule really is phoning it in.
• If I did that, I bet I could revise my previous shoe resolution to one purchase a week.
• I would definitely, definitely hang the oversized glass dreidel ornament from my mother-in-law on the Christmas tree, front and center, before her arrival, instead of keeping it packed away “in case of breakage.”
• I would not let more than four weeks pass between bikini waxes. Oy, the suffering that could be avoided.
(This article ran in San Diego CityBeat on January 5, 2011. I’m a little behind in posting.)
I only had to click my heels three times
We’re back home and trying to readjust to the time zone. I’m wiped out—a chocolate mess, as The Gaydi Project would say. I can hardly form coherent sentences. Then again, maybe synaptic lapses are due to ingesting toxic amounts of butter and cheese.
Tonight we went for sushi with Ruby and Sam’s parents, who are staying through the weekend. As I was helping Ruby out of the car, she started to giggle that silly, round-edged toddler giggle that sort of burbles up from deep in the throat. “I got no panties on, Mama!” she said through laughter as she lifted her dress in the parking lot. I’d forgotten to put them back on after she’d used the loo earlier in the day.
Tonight, I begged my mother-in-law to change her plane ticket and stay for the month of August because the house has never been so clean and parenting never so easy. She said yes. My father-in-law said no. I pointed out that I wasn’t inviting him to stay on. Just his wife. He drew his line in the sand and I’m hoping I’ll be thankful to him by Monday morning.
And if all of that isn’t enough of an indicator of how mentally non-functional I am, I actually told the in-laws that they should sell their house and buy one here that’s big enough for all of us to live in together.
Jet lag is some serious fucking shit, people. There should be a warning label on it.