Mother-in-law

              Today is my mother-in-law’s birthday. She is alone in Florida. Her husband died four weeks ago. She has been busy throwing out his things. While it’s sad for her, it’s also empowering. There are things he kept which drove her crazy: a giant box of rusty nails; souvenir baseball caps from every place he’d ever been; papers—some important, most not. Out they all go. “I got space in the garage now!” she crowed, thrilled. She likes things organized. She gave most of her husband’s clothes to the man who cleans her pool. He was so appreciative, my MIL said, they both stood at the edge of the pool crying.

              She has been spending time in her garden. She picked up ten bags of mulch at Lowes. “It took me two trips, but I did it.” She’s 80. (Meanwhile, I struggle getting 5lbs of flour in my grocery cart.) When she comes to visit us, she gardens in our garden. No one can dig a hole like my mother-in-law. Once she saw my wimpy arms lifting an inch of dirt with the spade, she rolled her eyes up to the sky and huffed, “Oh, for godsakes. Give it here!” She practically shoved me out of the way. She slammed the spade into the ground and forked up two cubic feet of soil. “THAT’S how you dig a hole!” She thrust the shovel back at me, rolled her eyes again and returned to her weeding. 

              My MIL is a Good Morning America junkie and every day she calls us with warnings about what to do or not do, based on what her favorite hosts say. She has been very concerned about her son, my husband. She calls morning and evening, asking for an update. My husband loves to pull her leg. He puts her on speaker phone while he tells her the most outrageous lies. When she asked if he was able to get tested, he says, “Well, they were pretty backed up, so I have to keep the swabs up my nose till I can go back on Tuesday.” She believes everything he says. “What?! That’s terrible! That must be so uncomfortable! How do you sleep?” He keeps the story going for as long as he can. He winds her up to the point of cruelty almost. I feel bad for her. I shout to the phone, “Nana, don’t listen. He’s full of it!” My husband pouts when I spoil his fun. Sometimes right after talking to him, my MIL will call me and fact-check. I’m the Snopes of their relationship: a "well-regarded reference for sorting out myths and rumors.”

              For my MIL’s birthday we sent her a pound of See’s chocolates, Nuts & Chews. She called us to thank us, telling us how much she loved them, how beautiful the packaging was, how she ate five pieces and then moved the wrappers around so it didn’t look like she had eaten so many. It is nice to hear her so happy. She has been sad or stressed for so long. She was her husband’s caregiver and barely left the house for the last weeks of his life. Now that she is finally able to go places, she is being told not to go out.  She keeps talking about the delicious chocolate. I make a mental note to buy her another box at Christmas. “I have a sweet-tooth, you know,” she said. I smiled. “Yes, I know. Have you tried the coconut one yet?” (Coconut is her favorite.) “There’s a COCONUT ONE?! Ohhhhhh! Now I am excited!”