My husband’s family loves to do the family holiday thing. They, though being Italian-American (and Viking-American), are not practicing Christians of any stripe, so I thought we might get away without a family event on Easter. Nope. There was still a get-together yesterday.

I shouldn’t complain. My in-laws are very nice people. We all get along much better than many extended families—similar politics (mostly) and they love to have a good time. It’s just very different than what I am used to. We didn’t do big family things much when I was growing up, and hardly at all after my mother died 20 years ago. To me, holidays are days when I don’t have to work and I can just do nothing if I want. However, to the in-laws, holidays are a chance to get together with everyone and eat and drink until you explode while the kids run around like a mini Barbarian hoard (or a Barbarian mini-hoard–you pick), usually followed by at least one dog and possibly one adult to make sure nothing gets broken, including any of the kids.

It’s loud and convoluted and alcohol-soaked and, for me, usually pretty exhausting. But they all love it, including my husband.

Actually, my mother-in-law does these things pretty well. In this case, she hid plastic eggs filled with candy and some change all around their back yard for our nephews to hunt (the other kids were in Utah with their mom for some home-school thing), and the dinner table was set with the good dishes and See’s Chocolates bunnies on each adult’s plate. And, as always, she cooked a nice meal (though it was lamb, which I loathe).

In the hours before dinner, we got up a game of Bocci. Now I’ve played Pétanque (aka Boules), which is the French version of the game (I even have a set), but I’d never played Bocci. In the French game, you use steel balls that are about the size of a baseball. Bocci uses larger clay balls, but the rules are about the same. I think I prefer Pétanque because of the size of the balls. My hands are too small to hold a Bocci-ball from above, which you need to be able to do to throw the great back-spinning bomb that is so useful in the game. I’m convinced that’s why we (husband and self) lost to my father- and brother-in-law.

Nevertheless, it was fun. Playing in their backyard has the added excitement of the element of danger: you might have to chase a rogue ball down the canyon. Luckily, that only happened once and not to me. I was wearing a dress and there are snakes and spiders and lizards and other scary creepies in those canyons.

This particular family get together was shy four people—the three kids and their mother. That was a good thing in that the mother tends to monopolize the dinner conversation. Thus, this was the first time I got to talk to and listen to my brother-in-law and his wife to any great extent. I also got to know my missing sister-in-law’s husband better as he came for dinner (even though everyone else was in Utah). Things were going quite well. After dinner, before it got dark, my husband was playing with his nephews while most of us were still around the table. Then, suddenly, my mother-in-law turned to me and said that I had better get started having a baby and how I couldn’t ask for a better father for my children.

Oh crap.

I had been hoping that I wouldn’t get this from them. It’s bad enough I have my own father nudging me about having kids, but the in-laws? Aren’t they supposed to nag their son and leave me alone?

Of course, Christopher and I have discussed the issue at great length. It’s an important one, and you’d better be on the same page as your spouse on it. And we are—we’re not planning on having any. If science fails and I accidentally get knocked up, we’ll deal with that then, but we are certainly not trying nor are we planning on trying. Ever.

Unfortunately, explaining this to the families promises to be an ugly task. I’ve already tried, repeatedly, with my own father. The frustrating part is that parents think they have a right to know the details about any important life-choice. It usually isn’t enough to say. “We’ve discussed [insert important personal issue here] and have made our decision.” No, instead, one is practically compelled to justify the decision, and, if it’s not the answer they want, they will want to debate it with you.

It would be easier if I were comfortable lying. Then, we could just say it was “impossible” and they’d never know any better. However, I’m kind of a stickler for the truth so we can’t do that. Besides, that’s sort of side-stepping the real issue at hand: adult children should not be second-guessed by their parents. We’re adults, we’ve made our choice, now get over it.

My father’s favorite answer to that is always that he’s “only expressing his opinion” and he’s “entitled to his own opinion.” You know what? He’s right…half-right. He can think and feel however he wants, but (and parents, pay attention here) he should keep it to himself or at least not share it with the adult child involved. Do you parents not remember how you felt every time your own parent criticized your choices?!

So, after a long day of family fun, I got hit with this pile of poo. Thanks Mr. Easter Bunny.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 12th, 2004 at 1:09 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.