I keep telling myself this was my choice. Marrying into this family…all my choice. So I shouldn’t be quite so offended, should I? I should be grateful my spouse asked for my hand in marriage, gave me a home, then knocked me up and made me larger than our car. We need a new car. If we don’t get one, they will strap me to the roof of the one we have – just like the dead grandmother in the movie Vacation. I know they will. She’s already told complete strangers of the plan. She is my mother in law. If she and I had met before my spouse and I met, I would have made sure she wasn’t in my life any longer. Sadly, if it had happened that way, I never would have met Lucas, but since I was lucky enough to meet Lucas first, I, unfortunately, said I do to his entire family as well.
It took a while to get to know them since Lucas and I started dating in September, got serious by November and his parents stopped talking to him in December. October was pretty uneventful though, except for that one time Lucas and I argued over the phone. I felt bad, so I put on a cute little purple negligee buttoned up my long wool coat over the goods and drove from my apartment in Denver to his townhouse in Boulder eager for him to open the door and see the present I wrapped for him under a long wool coat. Come on, every woman has done that, right? You don’t think about the thirty minute drive where you could get pulled over or flip your car and end up in the hospital with some doctor cutting off your coat talking about how people shouldn’t wear coats while in the car because it lessens the safety of the seatbelt, or the conversation you’d have to have with your family or friends when they come to bail you and your purple nightie out of jail because even though you’ve never done a single thing to go to jail, you’ll surely make a visit that night simply because wearing a little purple almost nothing under a long wool coat is just a bad omen. I didn’t think about any of that on that particular night. I also didn’t think about the fact that his parents who may or may not have been out while Lucas and I were arguing over the phone, would be sitting in his living room farting over and over again making the place smell like rotten cauliflower sure to set the mood I was not looking for in the purple nightie. I also didn’t think about extra clothing.
Luckily for me, I was never pulled over, didn’t have to visit an emergency room, or see my family while sporting all the preparations of sex ahead. Wow, looking at that I’m pretty sure I’ve admitted to having sex with Lucas not too long after we started dating – 6 weeks….8 weeks…?? Well, we are married now, so shut it! And don’t tell our children! But I did have to walk into his townhouse that smelled like cauliflower ass wearing a shiny purple negligee, greet my boyfriend, and walk straight upstairs and pretend to be sick. Sure every girlfriend drives for half an hour to get to a different bed in which to rest while feeling ill. I’m sure it was a believable story. I’m creative like that. ‘Hi, honey, can I take your coat?’ ‘No, thanks, I drove here in my coat and I don’t want to take it off because I’m so cold. I just may have a fever. Can I just sleep here tonight? G’night, all.’
Shit! Maybe I looked the idiot that night, but all I did was try to be sexy and show how sorry I was for arguing and how fun it can be to make up. Instead I was almost ill. I can still smell the cauliflower ass and feel that same sickening feeling, so maybe there was no salvage to the evening. Though I’m not sure how I’ll ever salvage the in-law relationship. They plan to put me on the roof of the car. I’d better get this baby out soon. Today would have been good, but we had plans to have breakfast with Lucas’ parents, and while they were waiting for us to arrive, my mother in law made sure to let everyone in the lobby know of her plans to tie me to the roof of the car. Actually, while we were walking into the restaurant, I heard her telling a woman none of us know, ‘If she gets any bigger we will have to tie her to the roof of the car like they did the dead grandmother in the movie, Vacation.’ I’m not sure what she said before that, and I’m not even sure I remember what was said after that because I could only focus on not beating her in public. I know the future is scary! But I don’t know what it will hold. All I know is I can’t take the baby and run! I love my husband too much!
Gandalf, as my father in law has named the baby girl growing inside me, isn’t ready to make her appearance just yet. But when she does, I know life will only get more and more interesting. For now, I can only look back at those good interesting days when my in-laws barely spoke to me…or to Lucas.
After meeting her the first time, I knew I wasn’t going to have to work hard to impress the mother of the man I knew I wanted to marry. First of all, she barely spoke to anyone, and second she didn’t seem to care much about the world around her. So to me, that simply meant as long as her son was happy, she probably would be happy as well. My new fiancé’s father was pretty much the same, only as long as he had food in front of him, he was enormously happy. They didn’t seem to care much about getting to know me or letting me know just what they thought of me…until my fiancé asked them to leave his home. They had moved in eight months prior for a short, three month stay while their house was being renovated. At six months, Lucas was becoming agitated, but being the good son, never said anything to his parents about having doubled their stay in his home. Two months after he began to wonder how to speed up the renovation process, he just spoke up one night while they were spilling food on his couch and we were getting ready to grab another dinner out. Dinners out usually meant he’d take an overnight bag to my apartment and stay with me for the night – at least. That night I watched salsa drop onto the couch twice, chuckled a little to myself and started to head for the door when I heard. “I expect this renovation will be complete enough for you to move back into your house within the next three weeks.” Lucas took my hand and we walked out the door.
Two weeks later, they were gone. They left a few wrapped DVDs on the couch, Christmas presents for Lucas, and never told him where they were going. Rumor within the family was I was moving in. It was another year or so before that happened, but now I think they felt Lucas wanted them out so I could move in. Lucas wanted them out so he could be a thirty year old man with a life inside his own home. The following October, Lucas proposed to me, I said yes and moved into that house not too long after I had a pretty ring on my finger.
It was time to tell his parents he was getting married! Lucas found them at their renovated home; with light switches hanging from holes in the cement walls, various fixtures lying around and clearly the one pan they were using to cook sitting on a counter littered with tools. It had been more than a year since the renovation had begun. Lucas told me later the house had pretty much looked the same the last time he was inside. Clearly not much renovating had happened in the year since they’d left the safe haven of Lucas’ townhouse. Lucas reintroduced me, but this time as his fiancé. He told them the date and destination of our wedding scheduled for the following spring and said he’d like it if they would come. Our meeting with them was about as long as the initial greeting. It went something like this, ‘Mom, Dad, you remember Rebekah, my fiancé? We’re getting married in June of next year in Las Vegas. I hope you can come. We have to get going. Buh-Bye.’ Okay, maybe not quite that informal, but regardless, from that moment my relationship with these people forever changed.