mother in law
Barbara Smith
t's important that you understand that I love my mother-in-law. There have been times, during the thirty years that I have been married to her son, when I could not have managed without her. She has looked after my children at a moments notice, comforted me when times were bad and even paid my electricity bill when times were worse than bad. So why do I feel slightly depressed when she comes to stay for a few days?
The problem is that she talks, non-stop, the whole time she is there.
" She's lonely," sympathises my husband. Then he promptly disappears to the pub, followed hastily by my son. Meanwhile, I am left to hear about Molly's hysterectomy.
" It's not like it used to be," she confides in a whisper. " They use a vacuum cleaner now." Thankfully I miss the next half hour of grisly details, my mind is still struggling with the practicalities of insertion [ surely, even a cylinder model must pose tremendous problems].
After Molly is dispensed with we progress to the entire family tree of everyone she knows. It starts innocently enough.
" You know Gertie's granddaughter?"she asks. I fall effortlessly into the trap by shaking my head.
" Yes you do," she insists. " Not very tall, a bit plump. She married that lad with ginger hair. His dad is one of the Barnes's who used to live on Roe Greave. There were three brothers and a sister. The youngest boy got killed in a motorbike accident and the other brother married a cousin of Sheila Mercer's who had the shop in Thwaites Road. He left her, ran off with that Annie who used to work behind the bar at the club. Anyway, she divorced him and then she took up with Ken whatsisname, from Trinity street. I used to work with his mother and she was a flighty piece I can tell you."
The problem is that she can go on in this vein for hours and I don't know any of these people, except from previous monologues.
Just as my eyes begin to glaze over she reels me back in.
" Anyway I saw her in Asda."
" Who?" I ask in total confusion.
" Gertie's granddaughter !" She says as if I haven't been listening. And with barely a pause she is off on a different tack.
She also has some very strange idea's. According to her, my husband would never have lost his hair had he worn his spectacles as a child. Our cat is a constant source of worry to her, because she knew a woman who got a cat hair in her mouth and it killed her. I found out long ago that it is useless to question these bizarre pronouncements, she knows what she knows, full stop.
Most of the things shown on television are [ in her opinion] full of sex and violence.
" They will be taking their clothes off to read the news next," is her familiar cry[ interesting idea though]. Old black and white films are her one great love. So when she is with us, these are invariably what we watch. You could be forgiven for thinking that watching these films would give me some respite. Wrong! She knows every single plot in every single film and gives a running commentary throughout. Yet strangely, she seems constantly surprised by the events that unfold.
" Oh my God it's sunk," she says dramatically of the Titanic. And here's me thinking it was common knowledge.
But when she leaves I have such mixed feelings. On one hand, my ears will be glad of the rest, but then I remember that she is an old lady, we are her only family and she lives some distance away, she must be very lonely. Deep down I know the real reason for my depression about her visits. Sometimes I listen to her chattering her life away and a horrible thought surfaces. Is this me in thirty years time?