Mother-In-Law, Be Quiet!

Like so many other women in this world I have a mother-in-law. Imagine all the connotations of this word and now add another. She's a Spanish woman who has lived in a rural village all her life. She gossips, she hates books, she loves celebrity talk shows on television, and she's always telling you what to do. Having raised six children and buried three, she is the only one who knows how to correctly raise a child. If you do it this way, she'll tell you modern methods don't cut it because she did it that way and they came out big, strong, healthy oxen. In other words, someone to visit every few days with closed ears but not someone to live with.

Sometimes, though, she'll ask me if she can accompany me on my weekly shopping trip because there'll be things she needs and she hasn't got a car. Those Saturdays my spirits fall three stories to the floor. She'll begin in the car, telling me about the latest my father-in-law did (they don't get along, but deep down they couldn't live without each other). She'll continue to my brother-in-law's wife, then to one of the neighbors, etc. At least she did, until I started cutting her off by saying I wasn't interested. (In truth, I was interested, because at heart I love hearing gossip, but not as if it were the most important thing in the universe.) So now she keeps that to the minimum. 

Then, in the shops, she'll follow me. If I stop to look at something, she'll look, too. If it's something she doesn't recognize she'll ask what it's for. Since I really don't feel like explaining why I want to buy certain things, I'll refrain from a deeper check whenever she's with me. But, having excellent, home-raised chickens, she'll criticize the store chicken I buy, saying it's tasteless and God knows what it was fed. And, until last year, having meat from a home-raised pig as well, she also criticized the pork meat I would buy. Now that she buys it herself, she doesn't say anything. 

And when she sees neighbors she knows and hasn't seen for a while, I leave her at it and walk around the supermarket looking for what I need and bringing it back to the cart. I prefer that to hearing what I did once and having the neighbor think maybe I was interested, too. My mother-in-law saw a woman she hadn't seen in a long time, whose mother had died some months previously. So they greet each other and then my mother-in-law asks, "So, who inherited your mother's house?" I looked down to see if a hole could pop open through which I could disapper. The woman didn't bat an eyelash and answered laconically without giving it any importance. Being a local, she was used to being asked personal questions like that. I'll never get used to it and whenever my mother-in-law asks me if I know about so-and-so, I say I have no idea. She's curious about everyone. If I stop to speak with someone she doesn't know, then she'll immediately ask, while the person is still in earshot, who was it and what did we talk about. I'll simply say it was someone I know and the conversation was of no importance. 

My husband complains, as well. Whenever she starts talking to him about her woes with his father or what a neighbor supposedly bought, or anything she's picked up on the vine, he'll say he's not interested and doesn't want to hear about it. He may be her son but he doesn't resemble his mother in her love of knowing about the neighbors.

He does resemble her in other ways, though. My mother-in-law has worked all her life and continues working. She plants corn, potatoes, carrots, onions, peppers, tomatoes, lettuce, collards, cabbages, and green beans. My husband helps with the bigger crops, but she does all the smaller ones herself. She raises chickens that she will sometimes butcher and give us for no reason other than to give. Until last year she raised a yearly pig she would butcher at Christmas time with the help of another son who visits at that time of year. She would share that meat with us. She shares her crops with us, and we sometimes have more lettuce or beans than we know to do with. When my father was in the hospital she came and helped clean his house.  She has helped my husband cut trees for firewood. She has babysat her granddaughter when it was necessary and made lunch when I couldn't. Slacker is not an adjective one would ever bestow upon her. 

But, oh, I wish she would stop gossiping!