“After giving birth, my mother-in-law told me to stay at home for 2 months. She said: you will catch a cold in your breasts”

I talk to Barbara in a green kitchen with small windows and a narrow passage to the other room. The walls are flooded with artificial light from a flickering light bulb. It’s noon, though you might think it’s evening. The windows overlook a porch with a stone floor, not directly onto the yard. “I drink coffee here in the morning and sometimes I feel like I’m suffocating,” Barbara chimes in. Instead, the kitchen on the first floor of a multi-generational house is blessed with the rays of the April sun. Barbara’s mother-in-law lives there.

No discussion

Between two sips of tea, I ask if she ever heard one of those famous mother-in-law jokes. Barbara smiles furtively. “You know that there is a grain of truth in every joke.

You can smile after the pieces. After a long journey from the hometown to a new home, a new life and a new family, you should also smile. With curiosity and hope for tomorrow. For Barbara, it was more laughter through tears. – It wasn’t easy. Waldek and I lived on the ground floor, my in-laws occupied the first floor. I just gave birth to David. I knew how to take care of my own child – “true”, then put in the mother-in-law. “You’re still young, so you better learnAnd she taught me, in fact, trying to prove that she knew everything best.

It was hot as hell in the house, the radiators were scorching from a distance, and my mother kept telling me to dress the child in two layers of clothes and cover it with a duvet cover, “because it will catch cold”. I protested – a brawl. After giving birth, she told me stay at home for two months and do not even lean out of the window, “because I will catch a cold in my breasts” and the tragedy is ready. After a few weeks, I became deaf to her taunts. I put on my jacket and went for a walk, being one step away from madness. Fresh air has never been so pleasant. Fifteen years have passed and I still remember that smell.

Beloved son

Barbara and Waldek lived on the ground floor and the in-laws on the first floor of a large house in the countryside. It would seem that such a system would ensure the separateness of farms. Two families in one building, two different lifestyles. Dot. – In theory yes, in practice not so much. Every step of the way I heard some golden advice. It was worst during arguments or minor marital squabbles. No privacy. No sooner had one of us raised our voices than a few creaks on the stairs. It was known that the mother-in-law was running to the rescue to reconcile us.

Waldek has always been her favorite – I had the title of “good daughter-in-law”, but whatever happened, she defended it anyway. When at 12:00 he was running to the shop with his friends for a beer, and I was sitting at home with a small child, my mother-in-law would say: “Well, what are you angry about? It’s nothing.” But when I drank a few glasses of wine at my sister’s wedding, she screamed from the doorway: “What kind of mother are you?!”

Unfinished stories

Another character, Judyta, tells me about similar experiences and tense relations with her mother-in-law. – We have an apartment upstairs, and the mother-in-law downstairs. And no one meddles in anyone’s life, but it wasn’t always like that. After the wedding, fights were the order of the day, because “her poor son had nothing to eat”. It didn’t matter that he ate three lunches a day. It hurts him – at least in her mind. I remember one such situation in particular.

I was pregnant, I was in the hospital for three days. When I arrived, “her son was hungry” because the fridge was empty. Fights and insults ensued. Then I said enough. And so it has been. Everyone will starch their turnips. Mother-in-law comes over for tea, sometimes for dinner (although apparently I make roulades badly) – but now as a guest. Not like before. I think it takes a lot of time and patience to work out an arrangement that suits us. Especially at the beginning, although now young people are completely different than we used to be – they won’t let it get to their heads. May! This comes in handy because I don’t think I know a mother-in-law who doesn’t try to put her two cents in everything.

At the request of the characters, the names in the text have been changed.