Kresha Warnock
Becoming a Mother-in-Law
I listen to the baby cry in her room. It’s 7 a.m., I’m up, and I wonder if I should go get my little granddaughter. Her dad, my son, worked late the night before. He’s a cop and last night was the fourth of July, and he had to make sure everyone stayed safe, didn’t get too drunk at the big fireworks display at Gas Works Park, down by the water in Seattle. This is Saturday and her mom gets up early every workday and deserves what the Brits call a “lie-in.” I’m visiting. I’m no way a stranger in their home, but I often don’t know when, exactly, to step in. I see my daughter-in-law cross the hall to the nursery, in the plaid purple flannel shirt that serves as a throw-on robe. She gives the little one a quick hit off her breasts and lets me take over, so she and my son can have a few more minutes of sleep.
So many iterations of this young mother, my relationship to her that have taken place over the past few years.
During the pandemic, the couple got engaged. K had made it plain she was to be the one to propose and, at her request, I had secretly sent out Zoom invitations to her list of family and friends, still quarantining in their Covid caves. Of course, D said “yes.” I now had “co-conspirator” (and sharer of joy) to open my portfolio of roles.
Tragedy struck. K’s own mother died a few months later. It was the start of the large movement protesting George Floyd’s death, and my son was on emergency duty so K had to fly back to New York by herself, take a cab to the family apartment, filled with old wood and art overlooking Riverside Park, where her father mourned. I had sewn the turquoise and green cloth mask she wore on the plane. I took on the role of feeling-inadequate-do-what-you- can support person at that time.
The wedding date was set for the following year. I couldn’t be mother of the bride; that role went vacant. But I went wedding dress shopping with K and helped her select the vintage lacy dress and the veil she would wear over her beautiful, ginger hair. I covered two dining room chairs with glossy white fabric, tied the corners with white satin ribbon, so the couples’ friends could dance them around the room at the reception. I was mother of the groom. We were legally family, and I now had the official title of mother-in-law.
Time passed. My son made a trip to Israel for a board meeting. I stayed in their townhouse to keep K company. On the Sunday afternoon, we went to a vintage thrift shop. I found a pair of cheap pearl earrings; she bought some beige shorts and a summer dress, short and a little sexy, to wear to a wedding they were going to that summer. The next day, I rode the express bus down to my home in Tacoma and, as I got there, she called me and told me she had just had a positive pregnancy test. I was the first to know, even before D, my son, her husband, because it was the middle of the night overseas. I became her confidant. When D called me, frustrated to be across the world at the moment they received this exciting news, he asked me to take care of her. I also became something of K’s protector and potential caregiver.
She suffered morning sickness far into her second trimester. But the only time, the one time, K actually threw up was when she drove an hour and a half, in clotted rush hour traffic, to bring me comfort and soup after I had knee surgery. Any of my clothes would been tent-like on her slender body. My husband helped her clean up the car, and she dabbed her shirt clean before the long drive home. That was a day I learned that when the time comes, she will also be a protector and potential caregiver for me.
On the day the baby had her first four-hour trial run at the childcare center, K and I were sitting in a little, green Seattle restaurant, eating quinoa salads, drinking tea, waiting for the time to pass. The baby’s teacher called; the little four-month-old would not take a bottle. I was grateful to be there to remind K that the child would be alright. But I knew my daughter-in-law well enough–outward calm covered up her inward hysteria, guilt, anxiety. We finished our salads, and it was time to pick up the baby anyway. That day, and many after my role has been the calmer.
Now my granddaughter is almost eighteen months. She wobbles around on her little toddler legs, she pulls out the elastic her mother uses to hold her topknot on her head and her baby-fine hair flops in her eyes, she giggles and points at the red, white and blue mylar balloons flying in the supermarket as she struggles to differentiate the words “ball” and “balloon.” My daughter-in-law has all the hard parts of parenting—exhaustion, work-life balance, worrying about what she’s doing wrong. I, of course, get the sweeter part of the deal. Grandma.
K calls me by my first name; it would feel horribly wrong for her to call me “mother.” When she introduces me to her friends, I am “mother-in-law.” We’re each comfortable with that name. We’ve learned the nuance of the term and know it is bounded by love.
Kresha Richman Warnock is a writer living in the Pacific Northwest with her husband. She is currently writing a memoir, contrasting her youthful involvement with SDS Weatherman to her more recent life as the mother of a Seattle Police Officer. She is the mother of two grown children (and loves their spouses) and a joyful grandmother. Follow her on her Substack, My Back Pages, [email protected] or read her essays at her website: https://kresharwarnock.com/