Home for the holidays
by Jon Worley

My wife's parents came down for Christmas. As regular readers of my stuff will remember, we got a newer car out of the deal. Plus five days in the company of her parents.

This wouldn't be so bad, except that her parents don't yet understand what my wife does for a living (and they are not concerned with what I do, with the caveat that they're quite concerned my wife makes most of our money). Her parents also do not understand our dreams and ambitions and have very little interest in actually trying to tap into our collective mindset.

What they do understand is that our life is about as different from theirs as they can imagine. Her parents prefer the suburbs; we wouldn't dream of living outside the city center. Their house is immaculate and impersonal; ours is a bit jumbled, and we don't even have doorknobs on our bedroom door (a source of great consternation for my mother-in-law). And her parents prefer to insist everything be done their way when they are in town. The whole doctrine of "when you're in my house you'll play by my rules" apparently applies only in Nashville.

Oh yes. Nashville. Years ago, I swore I would never marry a southern woman. Something about the accent that set me off. My wife managed to convince me that my prejudice was ill-placed. At times like this, though, I wonder whether or not I should have taken my own advice.

The main problem is that her parents refuse to accept our differences. Instead, they always have a comment on what we do and how we do it. I do the cooking in may family, so I got a few of the kitchen comments. Among the complaints: I order my spices in correctly, I stack cans of tuna next to my soups and I have more pasta than cream of chicken soup. And these are the petty problems.

We've gotten a laundry list of our shortcomings during the past week. My wife has gotten the brunt of the mess, and she's totally fried out. After a week of hearing her parents run down her house, her husband and her life, she doesn't know which way to turn.

"I can't please them!" she hollered at me last night. "There's just no way. Nothing I do will get them to shut up."

I tried to console her. After all, kids will always yearn for their parents love and acceptance. And her parents do love her. They are very proud of her. Yet, they still feel the need to pick apart her existence whenever they are within earshot.

It doesn't help that my parents are relative angels in this matter. In fact, my mother and my wife get along very well, as they share many of the same interests and beliefs (don't even start with the Freud, folks). But the general mellowness of my parents only showcases her parents' shortcomings in this area. And despite all the friction, my wife still wants to think of her parents as the best parents in the world.

Unfortunately, whenever I try to help her understand and work through the problems, I do end up describing her parents in terms she can't stand. I prefer to think of these terms as delineating our differences, not passing judgement, but my wife sees these traits as "bad". And she can't stand thinking of her parents as anything but perfect.

The solution? My wife's parents would have to learn to acept our life and to hold their tongues whenever something they don't like confronts them. These things are not in their nature, and I don't see them changing. My wife would have to learn to stop wanting overt acceptance from her parents. And that's certainly not going to happen.

So we're pretty much stuck. My wife will always go crazy whenever she's in the presence of her parents, and I will simply have to deal with it. When we have kids, I know all this criticism will be multiplied. I've got a fairly thick skin (and anyway, they're not my parents, I can always rationalize), so I can probably handle it. My wife, on the other hand, seems to be a good candidate for a stroke.

I know these problems aren't unusual at all. Indeed, I am very happy to have the relationship I have with my parents. I simply wish my wife the same happiness. I just wish I knew how to follow through on my wish.

Jon Worley's parents-in-law left town today. His wife plans to return to normal sometime this week.

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