Progress.

Why do I feel like I'm saying something strange when I say I love my Mother-in-law?  I don't love her because she's my Mother-in-law.  I don't even love her because she's Peters Mom, although I am very grateful to her for that.  No, I love her because I've grown to love her.  And in order to grow to love her, I had to... well, I had to get over myself.  A lot.

I remember taking hot yoga classes years ago and I always wanted to go to the same two or three instructors.  I mean, I would take classes with other instructors if I had to (after all, I was a hot yoga addict), but I felt I wouldn't get as much out of the class and would spend most of time fuming about how the instructor was ruining the class for me.  So one day, I confided to a friend (who happened to be one of the instructors I liked) about this, because I felt mildly bad about it.  He didn't skip a beat, and said, "The instructors you like the least are the ones you stand to learn the most from."  I thought it a bit of an asshole comment at the time, but didn't hold it against him; he was a yoga instructor and yoga instructors say things like that.  And when I had what amounted to a  "yoga breakthrough" a few weeks later in a class taught by  an instructor I disliked, I didn't think too much about it.  I just thought she had grown on me.  Dense.

Well, my relationship with Joyanna, Peter's mom, has followed a similar course.  It took me over a decade to give her the respect I expected her to give me.  I didn't listen to her, not really.  I disregarded most of her well-intentioned advice, just because.  Her opinions were essentially inconsequential.  If I sound like a brat, it's because I was.  And I still am, more often than I'd like to admit.

So what changed?  I can't put my finger on any one thing, like that sweet "a ha!" moment that ties things together so beautifully in books and movies.  But I can say that I finally started noticing and dissecting things about myself more than I noticed and dissected the actions of everyone else around me.  And the only word I can think of to describe my reaction, was that I winced.  I realized that I was no prize, not with the way I conducted myself with certain people; the people I stood to learn the most from.  And over time, I relented.  I relaxed.  Most of the time... because no one is perfect, right?  I'm still the same brat I always was, but now I'm a brat who tries to listen and who tries to give people, like Joyanna, the respect they have earned and deserve.  And I succeed at it, much more often than I ever thought I would.  

So when my Mother-in-law came over this morning and spent the whole day with Sonja and Haven and me, I was grateful.  Why wouldn't I be?  The woman taught me how to make her amazing bread recipe (four gorgeous loaves now grace my kitchen table); she stayed home while the girls were napping and let me get out for a beautiful, drizzly run; she helped with dinner and bath time and gave the girls goodnight kisses before driving the forty minutes back to Mill Bay.  She's my friend.  She made my freakin' day.  

Joyanna, the day Peter and I married.

With Sonja, when Sonja was about two-months old.

On a train with Haven, when Haven was about four-months old.