Mother-in-law is usually either disliked or treated with prejudice.
But my colleague always spoke of his wife’s mother with great respect.
When asked what was the secret of his good relationship with his mother-in-law, he replied:
“When I got married, I looked apprehensively at my future mother-in-law.
I had heard too many stories and complaints from my friends about bad mother-in-law, and I thought that was the case with everyone.
Especially since my wife’s mother was single at the time of the wedding and I expected her to be bored with interfering with our family.
But time passed, the mother-in-law did not flash on the horizon.
Of course, she called her daughter every day – I regularly heard her on the phone, but that was all.
Then the baby was born, and I thought maybe now she would spend the day and sleep in our apartment to teach the mind.
But my mother-in-law also disappointed me here — she bought a stroller, brought a whole suitcase of diaper-crawlers and again quietly disappeared.
She, of course, helped to sit with the child, when his wife needed to urgently go to the clinic or to the dentist.
But that was the limit.
But then one day I had a great plan.
As summer approached, I suggested that my wife go somewhere to the sea to rest.
And the child for this time to leave her mother – anyway, she is alone, let her grandson rejoice.
My wife laughed and asked me to talk to her mom about it.
I come to my mother-in-law for a reason, but with candy.
She smiles, meets, brews tea.
I tell her that it would be nice for a grandson to spend the summer with his grandmother, while the parents rest a little and gain strength at sea.
She listens to me and answers…
— Of course, I could take my grandson with me for the summer.
But tell me, my dear son-in-law, when will you have the opportunity to take your three-year-old son to the sea?
Just this year. After a year, it will be a four-year-old boy, a little different.
And you’re gonna lose a whole summer of your son by fusing him with Grandma. Would you give me that jewel so easily?
Fifteen years later, your own son will not want to go to the sea with you, because he will be an adult and have friends of his own.
It will grow quickly, and you will not even have memories of how you first got, holding the hand, an enthusiastic baby in the waves of the surf.
How he first put a shell on his palm and built a sand castle with him for the first time.
It’s your right first and foremost!
And it’s your son’s right to remember that it was his father who first showed him the sea, not some other man.
Don’t deprive him of it!
— Trust my experience, our children are with us for a very short period of our lives. Every moment spent with them is unique.
And you know, I was thinking hard.
I remember being sent to my grandmother’s house all summer. I remember how my father always had no time for me – everything was taken away by work. And then he had a heart attack and it turned out I really had nothing to remember about him. So that year we went to the sea together.
A year from now, too.
I love and respect my mother-in-law because she is a wise woman.
The Holy Land Charitable Foundation
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Orthodox stories from life
