My mother in law and I recently had a falling out. For me, it seemed to come out of nowhere. I really loved her. I thought she was cool and fun and amazing, and I frequently told my friends how much fun I had talking to her and spending time with her. I was surprised to find out it was one sided.
My mother in law and I come from very different worlds. She has money. A lot of it. The kind of money where her outfit on any given day is worth more than everything I own put together. I didn’t think it mattered to either of us though. I was happy in my $20 bathing suit and my $10 flip flops, carrying the free tote bag I got from the public library. I knew she was happy with what she had. Material things are irrelevant when you have shared interests, like the wonderful and amazing person we share. I loved her sense of humor, and I loved playing games like rummikub and cards against humanity with her. I loved that we could drink wine and crack silly jokes about nonsense things. I loved her sense of style and I loved hearing about the ways she demanded space and insisted on living on her terms, in a generation where women were expected to give up so much of themselves to men. I admired her tenacity and her ferociousness. I loved her. I loved her open mindedness, and I loved how willing she seemed to be to learn about and hear my experiences, as someone who wasn’t white, and who didn’t have the same privileges and life that she did.
I loved how excited she seemed to be about the work I was doing. When we accidentally found ourselves delivering groceries to more than a hundred people in our neighborhood at the height of the pandemic, I loved that she was supportive, and that she even seemed proud of the work we were doing. I loved that she asked questions about it, and that she seemed to care about the people we were feeding. I loved that when we had to skip weekends visiting her because we were out providing supplies and basic medical care for the homeless encampments in our city, she wasn’t upset with us, she instead asked what conditions were like, and wanted to know what she could do.
When my mother died, she did the most thoughtful thing she could: she gave to a foodbank in my mother’s name, knowing what it was like for my family growing up with food insecurity, and knowing how dear a cause that is for us.
So when I got her messages, yelling at me for being tired in response to a woman who had behaved hurtfully toward myself and my daughter, I was shocked. I didn’t know how to respond. I didn’t know what was happening.
Truthfully, I thought she was having a stroke at first.
When she told me that she had always had reservations about me, and that she only put up with me because she wanted a relationship with her son, I was crushed.
It didn’t hurt because it was a rejection of me. I’m used to people not liking me. I am a strong-willed and opinionated person. I have my values and I stand by them, and people don’t always share them. I don’t expect everyone to always like me, and I don’t take it personally when they don’t.
It didn’t even bother me that we didn’t share values. I don’t expect everyone to think or behave the same way I do. I know that we may have different morals, and I’ve lived long enough to understand that there really is no such thing as bad people, just lost, confused people who make bad decisions, often with good intentions, or fear, or a lack of information. There’s no sense in passing judgement, not when you can’t possibly have all the information.
It bothered me that I had spent so much time under the impression that we were reaching across two different worlds in an attempt to understand each other. I had given her so much grace, assuming that so many things she had said and done came from a good place, even if they weren’t the kindest things that could be said in the moment. Every accidentally hurtful word, every misplaced judgement, to me, was just a symptom of her trying to reach me and not understanding the cultural barriers between us.
I had chosen so many of my words so carefully, and I had intentionally chosen not to take offense at so many things that were said to me.
But the effort was one sided. Her goal was never to understand me. Her goal was never to reach over and try to learn about what things were like in my world, but to sit in judgement of my world, and remind herself of all the ways she was better than me because of living in hers.
And that in and of itself isn’t the problem.
The problem is that her son lives in my world. And that judgement? It isn’t just me she’s judging.
She’s judging her son.
Her son who has tried so, so, so hard to build a relationship with her. Who has cried himself to sleep about how much he wished his mom thought of him as successful and worthy.
Who over the last two years, finally felt like she did, only to have her rip it away from him again.
I’m crushed because I’m a mother too, and I love my son, as much as I know she loves hers. And I’m so, so terrified to think about how much our fears and our anxieties can ruin something as delicate and as powerful as our love for our children.
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