On New Year’s Day, while Sam napped in the backseat, I sat in the front waiting for him to wake. We were outside of my father in-law’s house where my in-laws had begun to gather to celebrate the day. I busily texted New Years’ greetings to my friends who lived far away and then I leaned my head against the car window and imagined where I would spend New Years if I was on the other end of those texts—at the 5 Spot eating brunch with Phyllis recounting the previous night’s misadventures. My head was so full of years past that my eyes had a hard time adjusting to the scene before me: The snow layering the rooftop; my sister-in-law and her husband hurriedly ushering their girls from their car into the house. When this millennium began, if I had seen them on the street, there wouldn’t have been a whisper of recognition between us.
Now, we are family who happen to live across the street from each other. My husband Dave bought our house years before we met and he bought it because it was across the street from his family: His older sister Lisa, his brother-in-law Matt and their two girls—Caeley and Sophia. He rescued it from auction, gutted and reframed it, intending to make it into his bachelor pad. When we met, it was still gutted.
The summer we were married, Matt, Dave and I worked hard to get it prepped for drywall. The day before our wedding, I swept, vacuumed, and wiped away as much of the drywall dust as possible. I put a blanket down on the bare floor, an aero bed on top of that and candles along the fireplace. This was to be my surprise to him: Even if it wasn't ready to move in, we would have our first night as husband and wife in our home. I figured I had everything we needed. But then Matt, our best man, left the reception early, and went to our house to install a toilet.
Dave and I crossed the threshold of our new home and right behind us trooped in Lisa and the girls who were on their way to join Matt in the bathroom. It wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.
It only took a little while for Matt to scoot his family out the door. As Lisa left, she gave an embarrassed laugh and said, “I guess you don’t want to spend your wedding night with your sister.”
When I didn’t have to creep around the backyard and was safe and warm inside (Matt had remembered to leave us toilet paper), I laughed at the previous scene. It had a sort a Screwball Comedy ring to it, so to speak. But to be honest, I worried about what it might bode for my future.
No one who knew me at the beginning of this millennium would have pictured me living “happily” across the street from my in-laws whoever they turned out to be. I tend to be overly clannish when I’m not being Greta Garbo-ish—I do so like to be “alone.” But regardless of my peculiarities, the in-law relationship isn’t exactly without its innate difficulties. You are instant family yet family seems to be the antithesis of “instant” unless you are a newborn. You might hope for friendship but shared interest and values aren’t guaranteed even with your spouse let alone his/her family. You are expected to participate in the very inner sanctum of someone else’s rituals and relationships yet even the Masons let you in on the rules before you head off to the meetings. There’s a reason so many Dear Abbey columns begin with “My mother-in-law/my daughter-in-law”.
I know my in-laws put up with me because I do love their kids: the two across the street and the rest. I’ve loved the trips to the maternity ward to meet Jim and Ann’s cuddly newborns. This particular in-law relationship—the in-law Aunt, I had written into my experience.
My Aunt Julie taught me how to be a good “aunt in-law” by being a good one. She baked bread in the morning and then made fried baloney sandwiches with spicy mustard in the afternoon. She was always game for a hand of 500 Rummy. And then when my cousin Brette was a girl, Julie let me tease and spray Brette’s hair, then dress her in “new wave” clothes as if she were my own renegade dolly. Julie was different from the rest of my family but it was her difference that made her dear.
For the first year or so I was married, I would tell myself—focus on the kids, the rest will come.
And it did. With every successive miscarriage, my mother-law-law, a retired nurse, would arrive at my hospital bedside, gently nudge her son aside, cradle my face in her warm hands, and look me in the eyes until I felt loved down to my bones.
Even with that, I’m sure that my in-laws probably thought I was difficult, prickly, and obstinate. And I must admit I’ve never had such a sudden and profound need to run across the street to do laundry as I have had at a few of the birthday parties—small living room, a cacophony of kids, and not a glass of wine in sight.
But then came Sam.
When he became mobile, one of his favorite destinations was the sun-porch to yell for the girls across the street. He’d toddle to the window, climb up to the sill, beat the screens with his small fists, and with a Marlon Brando intensity would yell, “Aeley” and “Ophie”. And then as he got his feet under him, he would run at Lisa in that wheeling, head first way that made me think he’d smack his head on the pavement. He had complete trust that Lisa would be there to scoop him up and she always was. His absolute trust in her made me look from him to her and there I saw the love that wasn’t just written into her experience but into her family.
He is her brother’s son, the continuation of her family, hers. And suddenly I felt a little less anxious. No matter what happened to me or Dave, there was someone who would take Sam in as her own, not as a charity case or even out of sense of duty or out of friendship to me but for whatever may come. And for an anxious new mom there is no better gift than someone loving your baby with that kind of devotion.
I realized I had arrogantly believed these relationships were about me, had something to do with my preferences, my likes and dislikes. Sam and Lisa had their own thing going on and I could get on board or not. How could I resist such easy love?
In an unlovely sense, it’s a little like Matt installing that toilet—it wasn’t in my plans, but wow what a relief.
On New Years day 2010, Sam awoke from his nap. Even before his eyes were open, he was freeing himself from his seat belt, asking if his cousins were inside, and excited to spend this day, this year, this decade with our family.
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