My Mother-in-Law and Paper Plates

The new year is officially underway, and Christmas seems long ago for many of us. Some are pleased to have the holidays out of the way for another year, while others look back with nostalgia at the time we spent with loved ones. I suppose I fall into both categories. As a mother, I fondly remember the delight my four-year old son took in opening each gift (and sometimes other’s gifts as well) and reminiscing about the time I spent with family and friends evokes feelings of belonging and affection.

Yet there is something about this time of year – maybe the way it gets dark earlier, maybe the interruption in routine, or perhaps becoming overwhelmed with social events – that stirs up my depression and drags me down around the holidays. It’s in those moments I deeply question my parenting abilities and wonder why God gave me a child. Even when I’m feeling well, I sometimes get overwhelmed by the notion that I am now in charge of a small human while he does everything possible to thwart my attempts to keep him alive and well. As I am writing, he is in his room having a conversation between his Hot Wheels, while he’s supposed to be napping. Not the worst thing. But I have caught him literally climbing walls, and when he was two years old, he had a seeming obsession with smearing poop all over his room. Sigh.

That being said, I enjoyed this past season and have many memories I won’t forget. One of those memories is of my favorite gift. Believe it or not, it was not the essential oil roll-ons from my aunt-in-law or the beautiful dress from my mother-in-law or even the couch from my parents and TV/DVD player from my sister and her fiancé. In fact, my favorite gift was not even given to me, per se, but to my husband. My favorite gift was from my mother- and father-in-law – paper plates.

Now, it’s not that I dislike any of the gifts I listed – I’m very much enjoying the couch and TV in the evenings and on the weekends when we are relaxing at home, for example. However, the paper plates and paper bowls we received from my in-laws are something much more profound than just a way to entertain large numbers of guests. These paper products signify acceptance. That my mother-in-law found it appropriate to give us these means she is acknowledging my limitations and respecting them. Perhaps there was a time she expected me to be the mother and homemaker she has been, but this gift communicated her assent to me being different. It’s any daughter-in-law’s dream come true.

Let me back up a moment. How do paper plates represent all this, you might ask? The short answer is that my husband and I constantly struggle to keep up with washing dishes, and my mother-in-law’s gift acknowledges that fact without criticism but rather with a solution to our problem. When my husband tore the wrapping paper off the paper plates, my mother-in-law explained that she hoped this would help ease the burden that our mass of unwashed dishes has placed on us. What does this have to do with motherhood? A lot, actually.

You see, motherhood adds an extra layer to the already sensitive interaction between a daughter-in-law and her mother-in-law. When a child is born, not only does the mother-in-law potentially expect the daughter-in-law to cook and clean and do life like she does, but also to parent like she did. For many mothers-in-law, this might not even be a conscious expectation, but they will find themselves feeling mysteriously let down and anxious when their daughters-in-law do things differently.

My mother-in-law has always been very kind and gracious toward me, and I am very thankful for that. However, I think she has still had this expectation that I cook a good, square meal every night and keep up with housework and keep the same rules for my son as she did for my husband. These paper plates are a breakthrough in my mind – she is accepting that I am different. I’m a different wife, a different mother, a different woman than her. She is acknowledging and welcoming that, reassuring me that it’s okay and letting me know, in her own way, how much she loves me.

Four and half years ago, having been married just about a year and having a new baby, I had many concerns as a new mother, not the least of which was what family pressures would be placed on me as a mom. I was sensitive to every comment my family members made about my parenting, and I understood many of my mother-in-law’s instructions as complaints and condemnation of what I was doing.

A little over a year ago, my mother-in-law was bringing me home from the psychiatric hospital and commented how, since I was not working now, I could clean the kitchen every morning while I was getting my son ready for the day. I was very hurt, to say the least – she seemed to ignore the major struggle I was having to comment on my cleanliness. Somehow, a year later, I find both she and I have grown. She is accepting me as I am, and I am learning to see love in her subtleties. I look up to her as a mother, and I find that these days I am more apt to listen to her advice than recoil at her comments. I’m coming into my own as a mother, and somehow that confidence has humbled me to be able to listen better to those around me.

Those paper plates have paved a new path in my relationship with my mother-in-law and with other mother figures in my life. I never knew I’d be so grateful for paper products.