Happy Friday, friends! I hope you are having a wonderful day and that you have some fun weekend plans on the horizon. Allyn and I are starting a new tradition, which I originally heard about on the Happier podcast, of planning a surprise date for each other once a month. We’re switching off month to month, and tomorrow is my turn to surprise him with a fun date! {Related post: 10 ways to save money on date night.} Other than that, our weekend should be nice and relaxing. I’m hoping to knock out some around-the-house projects, and tonight I am way too excited about heating up a frozen pizza and watching Netflix in my pajamas with my hubby!
Today I wanted to share with you guys an essay I wrote about my mother-in-law Barbara that appears in Chicken Soup for the Soul: Best Mom Ever! and was recently published on Sweatpants and Coffee.
My Cheerleader
Before I met the man who would become my husband, I worried. First, I worried if I would ever meet him at all. Then I worried if he would take my career seriously—I am a writer, and I know from experience that it is one thing for someone to say they support and value your work, and quite another for someone to actually stand by you, quiet and staunch comfort through the years of rejection and uncertainty, without ever so much as implying that maybe you should get “a real job.”
Finally, I worried about his mother.
I do possess qualities that mothers tend to appreciate. I am calm, steady, a good listener, a practical dresser. I am relatively tidy, do not drink or smoke, and love to bake. However, I am also an artist—and more than one mother of a previous boyfriend has treated this aspect of my life with palpable condescension, or at the very least a complete lack of understanding. The mother of the man before the man I married—the mother of the man I almost married—had wrinkled her nose in confusion every time my writing came up in conversation, and talked with pointed admiration about all the young women she knew who were making “good, honest money” in traditional office careers, with paid vacation time and Monday-Friday workweeks. When I received a prestigious writing fellowship to move to California and work on a book, it came as no surprise that she didn’t see why I would ever take it—and, it quickly became apparent, neither did her son. When we broke up, I vowed to myself that I would not settle for anything less than a partner who truly appreciated and valued my writing career. However, it seemed like too much to hope for a mother-in-law who would do the same.
I met Allyn, the man who became my husband, on a rainy February night at an ice cream shop, when no one in her right mind would be craving ice cream. It felt like something out of a movie: the fogged-up windows, the cozy warmth of our conversation, the ice cream melting in our small paper cups as we talked and talked. It was immediately obvious how close Allyn is to his family—as I am to my family—a trait I very much admire. But it made me even more nervous to meet his mother…
You can read the rest of the essay here.
Have a masterpiece day, my friends! Thanks for stopping by my little corner of the internet!
Day-By-Day Masterpiece 