Mother-in-Laws

My wife and I were discovering that we really didn’t know one another. It has everything to do with the Coronavirus. After being married for over 35 years when we were suddenly forced to live as one.

We were now also experiencing an empty nest for the first time. Even our only child a 34 year old slacker son Lamont had finally moved out of our basement taking with him his video games, drums, interracial blow up dolls and his Carburetor Bong, Straight-Tube Bong, Beaker-Shaped Glass Bong, Round-Base Bong, Multi-Chamber Bong, Percolator Bong, Bucket Gravity Bong, Water Fall Gravity Bong and his hash smoking Dugout Pipe, The Bukket Pipe, Acrylic Pipe, Stone Pipe, Wood Pipe, Jack the Ripper Glass Pipe, Funguys Pipe and his favorite Lava stone Hand Pipe.  

It wasn’t by choice that he voluntarily moved out. If it hadn’t been for him and his half baked cronies trying to rob an armored Brinks truck in broad daylight without a realistic plan. I don’t think he had the mental capabilities to live outside of his real world basement. He was truly a Mummies boy.

I was learning more things about my wife that I hadn’t noticed in eons. She was like one of those wives in that movie The Stepford Wives about a small suburb where the women happily go about their housework cleaning, doing laundry and cooking gourmet meals to please their husbands. Unfortunately, there are no Bobbie or Joanna to discover that the village's wives have been replaced with robots except for me.

I know that there are probably a lot of husbands who would trade places with me in a New York minute if they could. Gloria was still gorgeous at, will it’s not polite to tell a woman’s age (55). I can’t even remember the last time we actually made love. We slept in separate bedrooms right after reefer boy was conceived.

The term "Stepford wife" entered common use in the English language after the publication of Ira Levin's savagely satiric sci-fi novel and it is generally used as a derogatory term which refers to a submissive and docile wife who seems to conform blindly to the stereotype of an old-fashioned subservient role in relationship to her husband.

Gloria had no problem adjusting to social distancing. She did all her daily errands and talked excessively on the phone every day to all of her clients in the morning with their major concerns. She was a PPC Specialist.

In truth it was me who wasn’t adjusting well having to stay indoors. I couldn’t play golf, play poker with the boys, see my mistress or even visit the strip club. My life was a mess until the day my Mother-in-Law Phyllis came to rescue me from obscurity.

I realized that most men don’t like their Mother-in-Laws as if they were like Fred Flintstones Mother-in-Law Pearl Pebbles Slaghoople whom hates Fred very much and she looks just like Wilma but her build is that of a man (mainly Fred's) vice versa. She is a loud, comedically bitter woman who complains about her past almost as much as Fred being a financially poor idiot. She has never approved of Fred as a son-in-law.

She reminded me of Darrin’s Mother-in-Law Endora in the tv series Bewitched. Endora Dobson disapproved of her daughter's decision to marry a mere mortal and she sometimes casts spells on Darrin for her own amusement. I can recall vividly when an outraged Endora changed Darrin into an old man to prove to Samantha that their marriage is doomed to fail. Then there were times when Endora turned the disrespectful Darrin towards her into a toad, a billy goat, a cat, a horse and a boy.

Now that’s one Mother-in-Law any man could do without.

Say what you will about Mother-in-Laws, there hasn’t been a joke or horror story that hasn’t been told. But who says all Mother-in-Laws have a bad reputation? Some Mother-in-Laws deserve a bit of a bad rap.

There was this British Mother-in-Law, Heidi Withers whose nasty email to her soon to be other son-in-law went viral or the legal battle between her comedian son-in-law, Mooney Croonquist, who she tried to legally sue him over too many jokes about her being his Mother-in-Law.  

You may want to pay close attention to what I’m about to share with you because it will be a bit complicated. You see in 1989, Bill Wyman, 52, the bassist player for the English Rock Band The Rolling Stones, who married Mandy Smith. She was only 18. They were married up until 1993 after Patsy Smith, Mandy’s mother, gave her full consent to the May to December romance. That same year, Mandy’s mother Patsy Smith, 49, married Stephen Wyman, Bill’s Wyman’s 31 year old son. That made Patsy Smith the Mother-In-Law and the Daughter-In-Law of Bill Wyman. This bizarre Mother-In-Law pairing would not last however as Bill and Mandy divorced in 1993 and Patsy and Stephen’s marriage ended in 1995.

Put on your mental seat belt. Sara Delano Roosevelt took her role as Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s mother very seriously and her role as Mother-in-Law was equally important. She married James Roosevelt, Sr. in 1880 and they had Franklin two years later. Sara’s possessive nature over her son was obvious and she once noted, “My son Franklin is a Delano, not a Roosevelt at all.” She doted on Franklin and was central to his life. Considering their relationship, it is no wonder that his engagement to Eleanor was such a source of resentment for Sara. Franklin’s mother deliberately took him on a cruise in 1904, hoping he would change his mind on the matter. Sara was a frequent visitor to their home in Springwood and despite the new couple’s financial income, they did not rebuff Sara’s presence. As difficult as their relationship was, Sara was keen to be a mentor to the orphaned Eleanor. Sara’s dedication to their marriage’s success was evident in her staunch opposition to a divorce following Franklin’s affairs. Franklin D. Roosevelt allegedly carried on affairs with at least five women. Lucy Mercer was Eleanor Roosevelt's social secretary. Margaret 'Daisy' Suckley was Roosevelt's sixth cousin and close confidant. Princess Martha of Sweden was forced to flee Scandinavia in 1941. He also had an affair with a brilliant, bourbon-drinking, cigarette-smoking Associated Press reporter named Lorena Hickok, or Hick and Susan Quinn. Sara was said to have threatened to disinherit Franklin if he did not save his marriage. Her focus was the success of Franklin and once she married her beloved son, Eleanor’s success was of equal importance. As the greatest female figure in Eleanor Roosevelt young adult life, Sara Delano Roosevelt’s role as Mother-in-law is one of historical significance. One can only assume, regardless of the stress of their relationship, the insecure, shy Eleanor that entered her marriage found her voice along the way to the White House. As one of, if not the, most influential First Lady of the US, the role of Sara in Eleanor’s life cannot be downplayed. I wonder how Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton Mother-in-Law Virginia Clinton Kelly would feel about her. We’ll never know because she died in 1994.

I was so desperate to get better reacquainted with my wife that I called my Mother-in-law and pleaded with her to stay with us until the coronavirus ended or to show me once again how to love her only celibate daughter. It was she who brought us together. I had just returned home after graduating from Harvard Law School when she insisted that I meet her shy and somewhat introverted daughter Gloria. She was afraid that her lovely daughter would wind up an old maid. She actually wined and dined and slept with me until I had no choice but to date her daughter Gloria. She even got me my first job working as an Associate for Sleaster, Sleaster & Froude.

When I went to pick her up from the uncrowded airport she asked me to join her in the airport bar lounge. She said that she couldn’t stay with us but there’s something she needed to get off her surgically repaired chest. She took my two hands into hers and whispered that I should have told you a long time ago that Gloria was asexual. All I could say is thank you Mother-in-law because for all those years I thought her not sleeping with me was because of something I may have done.