Does this sound familiar, below the scene, act one, plays out around August 1, 2010:
“Honey, did you call your mom and talk to her about Thanksgiving?”
Honey: “I didn’t get around to it. I’ll do it later.”
Fast forward another few weeks:
“Hey, did you talk to your mother yet? An email, a phone call, courier pigeon? Smoke Signals?”
Husband “Oh, right. I forgot. I’ll do it this week.”
Fast forward to Halloween:
“DID YOU CALL YOUR MOTHER YET? THANKSGIVING IS IN THREE WEEKS. IF YOU DON’T CALL I AM GOING TO (insert any threat you can think of)
Husband “It’s still so far off. I’ll get to it, relax.”
Do you think I’m secretly live-streaming your own household conversations on the web? Right? Is this not eerily familiar? Is it me or do husbands FAIL miserably when it comes to communicating with their mothers. Right?
Do I hear an “oh hell yes” echoing from the masses? I’m sure I do.
With all the lists of things to do that come with the holidays (and really any other time of year), let’s never forget to add “call your mother-in-law” to that list because no matter how many times you ask, how many times you plead, how many times your bark, bitch and threaten, they don’t call their mothers.
We can talk about the second shift, gripe about how much we do around the house, all the laundry, but what the professionals never add to that list is calling the in-laws. This is just more work and it inevitably falls on us. Sure, I”m sure there’s some miracle husband out there who calls his mother regularly and when August rolls around starts thinking ahead to the holidays and how family time will be split, and bites the bullet and calls his parents to discuss when the family is coming to town, directly answers any difficult questions and certainly never deflects or says “I’ll talk to Susie about it” (so then when the answer he knows is the right one comes out, Susie looks like the bad guy and not him) but I don’t know him. Do you know him? Are you married to him? Can he start teaching lessons to my husband? I’ll pay. Whatever that amount is, I”ll pay. But only if his teachings deliver tangible results, not empty promises.
We all like to talk about how husbands taking initiative around the house is a turn-on and is better than a little robin’s egg blue box under the tree….but do you think they realize how much more this is true when it comes to clearly communicating with his own parents? For the love of GOD. And ESPECIALLY around the holidays when we have more parties, more gifts, more planning, more errands, more baking, more of EVERYTHING to do, we would really love to not have to handle managing the logistics of both sides of the family and fielding difficult questions being asked by someone else’s mom.
So honey, for Thanksgiving, for Christmas, for Hanukkah, guess what – call your MOTHER and make some plans yourself!
