There are circles of kindness in the world where you can never pay back the person who helped you. You have to help someone else, and they help someone else, and so it goes. This seems to me a mostly female concept. Women know to wave at the kind person who let them merge into the heavy traffic on the expressway. They hope to receive a wave when they let someone else in ahead of them next time. Men, and Lexus drivers, rarely wave. They don’t have to. It is their road.
I have had good friends in different cities who would pop in for an hour during my parents' visits to my home. They would sit down and listen to my parents’ Pie Report of every place they stopped on their drive. Carole, Kate, Cheryl, or Sue; they all knew I needed that hour without my mom at my elbow, watching me load the dishwasher, and saying, “Oh, I never knew you could load front to back.” I love my mom dearly, but I reach a screaming point when she asks if she should cut the sausage 1/4" or 3/8" thick. I’ve been able to play the role of designated distracter for some of these friends in return, but some no longer have living mothers or mothers-in-law. I must return the favor by distracting another woman's visiting mother-in-law.
I was married for nearly nineteen years, which is very similar to being taken aboard the aliens' spaceship. My mother-in-law bought collectible plates of Young Elvis and Old Elvis as retirement investments, and wanted a doorbell that played "Bridge Over the River Kwai". She also wanted to move into a trailer in her own backyard*. She was pretty much crazy as a loon. Holiday family gatherings in her home were bizarre events. Her only real talent was figuring odds to bet the horses at the Ak-Sar-Ben** racetrack. In the kitchen she could create havoc, but not actually put a meal together. One of her four daughters or I would have to go off and sit with her while she chain-smoked to keep her out of the way (and to make sure she didn’t set a fire in a wastebasket). Eventually she would escape, and go off to rearrange the arms of sleeping babies because they "didn’t look comfortable", get them all awake and crying, then go back to impede food preparation.
While she was out of the kitchen, my father-in-law would microwave the meat into a uniform flavorless gray substance, and then make creamed turnips.
Dating Hint: If you ever go to meet your boyfriend's family for the first time, and they serve creamed turnips, run, run like the wind!
One of my sisters-in-law would have brought edible food over from her house; another would maybe get it together to set the table; the twins would stand around in doorways doing those preteen cheerleader arm motions--OUT, CROSS, DOWN, SLAP! I would be carrying stuff from the kitchen to the table around the cheering, or else be changing diapers and trying to decide if that rash just might be chicken pox. Occasionally my spouse would be willing to watch the kids. Then I would sneak downstairs to the beer fridge with the other "out-laws" to step away from the weirdness and exchange war stories. We shared the bond of survivors.
Finally, the family would sit down to dinner. My mother-in-law would announce that I had something special to tell everyone. I would say, "Huh?" She would then announce that I was expecting. This would be somewhat dumb-founding, since I never happened to be at the time. The family would then engage in arguing about everything under the sun, especially politics. Finally when everyone had eaten all they could stand, the true plotting would begin. What was the best way to storm the mall when doors opened on Dec. 26th in order to corner all the half-price giftwrap? How early would we need to arrive? Who would carry all the boxes of sweaters that needed to be exchanged? Who would run to customer service to be first in the exchange line?
I can't tell you more specifics because then I would never be returned to my home planet. I can tell you to please let that lady on the entrance ramp in ahead of you. She may have spent the day with her in-laws. Let the circle of kindness continue.
*This has seemed less crazy since my kids became teenagers.
**Nebraska spelled backwards.
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