Its a story old as time: Boy meets girl, girl marries boy, new mama secretly hates girl. When I started dating again I had all these questions I asked before a boy was ever able to walk through the first door. It was a list. A big list. What I didn't ask, because in my first marriage I never dealt with this issue was, do you have a mama and are you close and is she crazy? Now before I go any further we should note for the record, I don't care if Mother Theresa is your mother in law, she's crazy. All moms are crazy. I fully admit that I am crazy as a mother. I feel bad for my son's future wife, it will not be pretty. She won't be good enough and she won't fold his clothes the right way. I'm not going to worry about Baby Girl's future husband because Big Chief is going to take care of that and have the hole already dug. There was not a lot of interaction with me and Big Chief's mama before we were married. She came to the house a few times and I tried really hard to impress her by making dinner one night and just trying to keep my big Yankee mouth shut. There's a huge cultural difference between Big Chief's southern roots and my obvious sarcastic no filter Yankee ways. The southerners like to remind you of that fact, they're still mourning the loss of the war. A lot. However, I have accepted their artery clogging sweat tea and their ability to bless hearts into my life. I think to reciprocate they just let me come to Thanksgiving dinner and eat fried turkey and bloated corn (which is apparently something called hominy, don't eat it, you'll just embarrass yourself in front of your new in-laws by spitting it in a napkin and then falling over from a seizure). I'm getting there with the blending, slowly. It's a crap shoot on any given day whether they like me or not. Now I just show up with booze in the trunk.
Once the eloping took place I guess you could say that may have set the tone for things to come for a few years. I had a huge wedding the first time around and well, that didn't quite work out. So for me, another big wedding was embarrassing and just didn't seem proper. I knew he wanted one and to this day, I do regret not doing it for him. When she found out we were engaged she was ecstatic, I think. And she didn't miss a beat. Our little wedding of just friends turned into a huge catered event with a fruit fountain and a band and I freaked out. Maybe if it had been a nacho cheese fountain, I wouldn't have gotten the fevers? So, we eloped. His mother missed out on her only child's wedding and I as his new wife didn't realize how this affected her until many years later. I think as a general rule biological mothers and daughters have their own turmoil but they've been dealing with each other's special brand of crazy for so long its normal. When you add the mother in law's special brand of crazy, well, we as girls have a natural tendency to be a little territorial and therefore, that's a whole new level of cray cray. There's a lot of jockeying back and forth on who's his #1 girl and who has the say. We went through many rocky years of ups and downs and emotions and my feelings are more important than your feelings. And Baby Boy was over in the garage drinking a case of Busch Lite yelling: "y'all are stupid I'm out of this". He still does that. And that's why I put sour cream in the mashed potatoes.
At some point the crazy kind of slows down and evens out. We just start getting along. Maybe its a new moon, a new addition with the granddaughter or we all up'd our meds? My mother in law gave me her prize winning baby boy approved home made from scratch cupcake recipe complete with the homemade icing. He loves mama's cupcakes. It was even laminated! I knew the tides were turning and we had hit the moment in our lives where maybe the petty fights were gone. So, I sat out to make those delicious vanilla cupcakes to surprise him with. I was so excited. Now, I'm not a baker. I can mess up a microwave brownie in a mug. But If I could master these cupcakes, man OH man I was going to be money. So I made them. Decorated them. He came home and bit into one and I knew right off the bat....something was wrong. So I took a bite. OMG what is missing from these, their awful. I couldn't figure it out. I had made them straight from her recipe. I'm looking around the kitchen, I double checked all my measuring devices what was going on? I don't know? I went back to making box cupcakes because I don't know what happened. Later that year she gave me her famous sausage ball recipe, the holy grail of recipes in his family, minus the baked mac n cheese I'm still working on! Now y'all if you've never had a sausage ball, its like you've never lived a full life. It's comfort food at its best. 900 balls of Bisquick, cheese and sausage baked and it goes straight to your waistline. And you won't care. The first batch I made burned and dry? OK, do another batch, the balls were not balls they fell apart and melted on the baking sheet. What the hell, YO!
As I'm sitting there sulking one night because well, now I'm gonna hear it. "That's OK baby boy, mama will make you cupcakes and sausage balls". I started scrolling through the TV channels pouting and irritable and came across Everyone Loves Raymond. And the light bulb went off. I'VE BEEN MARIE BARONE'D!! There is an episode where Debra desperately wants to make Ray's favorite meal that only Marie has the recipe for. She brings her a box over with the recipe and all the ingredients so it will be "perfect". Only its not. Its awful. And Debra can't figure it out. And as she's boxing all the stuff up to take back to Marie the label falls off one of the herb bottles, it was not the correct herbs! Marie had faked the label so the dish wouldn't taste good. So I called my mother in law and told her what I had made and read off the list. Everything was good. It was all the same. You can imagine how heart broken I was that my streak of being the world's worst baker was all on me. Again. And then it happens, later that year she's at my house and she's going to make sausage balls. She grabs my recipe that she typed and she says..."Deana RAE, I didn't put the milk on the here, oops" and laughter. Now, she claims this and the cupcake snafu was all an innocent accident but I know, deep down....Marie Barone is my Mother In Law!!! OH we laugh about that now...but one day, oh one day.........
At one point in our relationship while Big Chief was deployed over the big pond I decided I would paint our house and ask my mother in law to come help me. She's kind of a self proclaimed jack of all trades handy woman. So I wanted to look like I knew something and wasn't just some dumb girl. I got the bright idea of prepping the house before she got there. I was going to putty holes and sand. I dropped my cloths and got busy that night before she got there. I filled, puttied and scraped. I even got out the paint and decided I'd do the hall and surprise her with one room done. She rolled in and took one look and said...Deana RAE, you're not going to be painting, you're going to watch Baby Girl and bring me something to drink. And it came out exactly how you read that. Judgment. So that whole weekend, I was the gopher. She painted my entire kitchen, dining room, hall (again) and living room along with the 12 foot sky light ledge. AND then she told Big Chief how she refused to let me handle a paint brush and she painted his house. We all laughed it off....I see what you did there Marie!
So now, when we go visit and she tells Baby Boy she made him cupcakes, I smile, because I know that's home for him. And we all just want to have a little home sometimes. She makes me feel welcome there too, she even puts chocolates on my pillow. I know that sometimes its very hard for her to feel that bond with me. Its because I'm a cold Yankee (according to baby boy) and my lack of wanting to be touched or hugged. (They're huge huggers...its awkward...I don't know what to do with my hands!) I came from a family that doesn't hug or say I love you or show outward affections. I do love Yeehaw, in her own special crazy kind of way. I'm very blessed and lucky to have someone in my life and my children's life that has been so welcoming. Without her, I wouldn't have my best friend and my life long companion in this world. So for that alone, I am forever grateful. I hope one day, she looks back on our time together and at some point I made her smile once or twice too!
