“I can’t believe you didn’t just contact her in the first place,” my wife declared.
She was right, of course.
Because no matter how far down the road toward gender equality we may have walked, keeping in touch still tends to be regarded as a “her” thing. Most of the birthday and Christmas cards I’ve received over the years signed by sons, I’m pretty sure, came home from the store in a daughter-in-law’s purse. If it were left to my sons, Hallmark would have gone bankrupt years ago.
Not only are our daughters-in-law probably the ones who remember our birthdays, they’re also the ones who emery board the rough edges off of our sons and raise our grandchildren.
And yet, in a nation that has holidays on its calendar to acknowledge everything from penguins (Jan. 20) to pickles (Nov. 14), there is no Daughter-in-Law Day.
Maybe that’s due to rumors about there being some people who don’t get along with their daughters-in law, generally because they’re convinced she’s not raising their grandchildren as perfectly as they raised their prince.
To check on that, I entered “daughter-in-law problems” on Bing. I got 90 million hits. Although that was better than “daughter-in-law from Hell,” which gave me 266 million.
Looking for a warm and fuzzy anecdote to support my cause, I Googled “daughter-in-law stories.” The first story on the list was about a daughter-in-law suspected of driving her husband’s family to suicide.
To help parents get along with their sons’ wives — or at least not drive either of them to suicide — one website even offers a list of the top 10 Christmas presents not to buy a daughter-in-law. No. 1 is a book by Dr. Laura called “The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands.” No. 8 is an ovulation detector. Being a daughter-in-law has to be tough enough without receiving an ovulation detector from your in-laws.
If I’m in the minority about daughters-in-law deserving a day, that’s probably because we have three daughters-in-law who are terrific, although one of them roots for the Green Bay Packers.
Still, if you’ve wound up with a daughter-in-law who’s less than perfect, maybe you need to remember one thing.
It's your son who picked her.
Contact D.L. Stewart at dlstew_2000@yahoo.com.
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