marriage involves facing some nasty facts. one of these nasty facts is the realisation that your spouse is already trained. and there is nothing you can do about it.
the person you now call your mother-in-law has instilled values in your lifemate that you will NEVER, EVER get rid of.
regardless of how much they shit you.
for example, my mother-in-law is very strict about the floor of the shower being grit-free. if you tracked in some sand, you’d had better wash it down the drain while you shower or risk her wrath.
i, on the other hand, couldn’t care less if there is sand in the shower. i, do, however, sport the pre-programmed housewife habit of my own mother – i am the wet towel nazi.
as a result of this sneaky mothering trait, my husband and i will forever be locked into a conflict that started years before we were born.
this conflict largely involves his (mothers) opinion that wet towels are not a problem as long as there is no sand in the shower versus my (mothers) opinion that only slobs leave wet towels lying around and sand in the shower is just a fact of life.
despite knowing this, my husband is still as astounded by my lack of appreciation over his efforts to rid the shower of sand as i am over his lack of comprehension that wet towels are the real enemy here.
so we have two apparently intelligent people who will never, as long as they practice any form of personal hygiene, be able to agree.
how annoying to have inherited such ‘customs’ in lieu of a meaningful spiritual inheritance. to have no family history to speak of, no fireside tales.
no, these are the past of MY people. these silly, irrelevant traits and habits that some convict housewife with a straw broom created to keep the sand from her outhouse. the ‘tidy towel’ plan that a boarding-house-patron maternal ancestor burned into her daughters because cotton was scarce in the war.
yet i find them, strangely, no less meaningful. they are not negotiable, as inflexible as any sacred custom. they will insist i maintain my heritage at the cost of the shame we would share if we acknowledged them aloud for what they are.