This morning on the elliptical machine, my friend Amy told me of a (slightly) off color joke she had received via email from, of all people, her mother in law. I cannot recall the specifics (because, as has become the norm, I was awoken by Georgie at 3:30 in the morning, thereby rendering me just shy of a blithering idiot) but suffice to say, it was of a (slightly) sexual nature. Despite nearing her 29th wedding anniversary, Amy was clearly thrown, just a bit, by having been on the receiving end from this particular sender. She’s an old lady! (Not Amy, but her mother in law…)
At that moment I had a rush of reality come over me. I suddenly became acutely aware that, God willing, I will be the mother in law one of these days and, God willing, I will still have enough mojo to find humor in off color jokes. Making it harder still to imagine is my sheer exhaustion from Georgie’s constant nocturnal (3:30 a.m., to be precise) awakenings which seem reserved solely for me. How will this child ever grow up to be a man, or even a teenager? Armed with the knowledge that, like an infant who needs to be fed in the middle of the night, this a phase that will conclude (it will, right?) it seems as unlikely and foreign to me as does being a mother in law. My reality is such that I can only equate it to the first three months of a baby’s life when you find yourself completely convinced that you will be warming bottles up every four hours for the rest of your natural life. I know intellectually that this is a (horribly obnoxious) phase, yet emotionally,I am fried. At this moment I am quite certain I am going to be awoken at 3:30 a.m. until the day I become a mother in law and then the torch will be passed to the nice young lady to whom he has become betrothed.
Until such time, I am hopeful not only that I will maintain my sanity and sense of humor, but that I will somehow manage to keep my anger, frustration, exhaustion, resentment and increasing gray hair from getting the better of me. I’ve said it before and am quite confident I will say it again: Georgie is very lucky to be as cute as he is…
