The Other Side Of A Mother In Law

They always say there are two sides to everything and this was the perfect example.

And what a perfect time for this challenge to be announced, as this event happened around the holidays, specifically, Thanksgiving.

It was my first Thanksgiving with my back-then boyfriend, Trevor, and his family. Yes, we were fifteen when we got together, but I wasn't allowed to do any celebrations with his family until I graduated high school and turned eighteen. And this was a spontaneous first Thanksgiving; this was the kindest word to use.

The guests for Trevor's family back then were his father, Danny, mother, Janet, and my husband’s half-sister by father, Molly. Molly was about twelve years older than my husband, but their relationship did have a strong bond, which was very odd to me. I have a half-brother by father also and we’re six years apart and never did we have a sibling relationship like how they have it. It also didn’t help that my brother lives in Florida and Molly only lives close to forty-five minutes.

Including this were Molly’s two children; a son who was fifteen and a daughter who was fourteen. With the request of Janet, she asked me to come to the house early so we can catch up and get the food prepared, so the hard work can be well finished and the delicacies will be ready for when the other guests arrive; I’ll do their introductions in a bit.

Fun small back story, my mother-in-law grew up on a farm with a brother and a sister; Janet is the youngest of the three. So, safe to say she grew up tough and there have been incidents where the sisters had almost committed murder and I don’t mean this as metaphoric, either. Waking Shelbie up in the dead of sleep, locking Janet in a cedar chest for almost ten minutes. Safe to say the play was a bit harder than the average person.

Years later, Shelbie married Travis and adopted Mark, who is only two years younger than Trevor. Horror stories were told to Travis, it didn’t scare him away from the woman.

Don’t beat me to the punch line, yet.

I am very fortunate to have a mother-in-law like Janet. I’ve heard of ‘evil’ and ‘jealous’ mothers-in-law who are seething to the bone that a woman’s son has another girl in his life. She does occasionally tease me about it, but she appreciates my presence and the love that I have for Trevor. If anything, Janet would make sure her son always takes care of my well-being.

Oh, yeah! This is supposed to be a story about a holiday event gone wrong. So anyway,

The time passed and the only guests we were waiting for were Shelbie and her family. It was close to 5:00 pm and Mark actually called Janet, informing them they were going to be a few minutes late. Janet, at the time, was okay with it. The previous night, we had a snowstorm, and Shelbie and her family live in the countryside, and let’s say that part of the country isn’t popular with the snow trucks to come to plow the snow and lay the salt down.

About a half hour later, another vehicle pulled up the driveway; the last of the group has arrived. Yet, for some reason, they were coming up the stairs really slowly. Did they bring too much food or is the driveway slippery? One of those could have been a possible and understandable suggestion. Sadly for Shelbie, it's not.

Click, click, click.

The clicking sound almost resembles a person walking with crutches. Turning around the corner was Shelbie with her foot in the cast, greeting everyone as if everything was normal. Except it wasn't normal nor was it fine. The cheery and joyful expression changed drastically on Janet's face, just like a stick of butter melting for twenty seconds into liquid in the microwave. It was quick but safe to say there's suspense. There's that saying, "Hell will freeze over when blah, blah, blah." Well, hell apparently just made this November night colder in Wisconsin.

I could sense the tension from Janet, Trevor could sense it too. Janet took a big breath in, her skin flushed red from her neck crawling up to her face. I thought she was a saint, the expletives that came out of her mouth were well hidden, but came to good use to her, like the words were just collecting cobwebs, but they were ready to go, if needed in an emergency. It's too long and not appropriate to mention in this story. Instead, I'll fast forward to the conversation portion.

"How dare you not tell me that this happened to you! You were supposed to tell me everything that happened! How could you not say anything!" Poor Shelbie attempted to speak, but Janet just kept going, giving Shelbie a long lesson.

A bit of a lesson I've carried with me for over ten years, note to self. Do not miss out on any details.

By the way, this is a true story.