bad timing

Over the years (nearly twelve), the All Time Number One Top Cause of Vicious Arguments in my marriage is my mother-in-law ("the MIL"). The Sober Husband has his mother on a a pedestal (during one argument, he memorably said, "My mother has never felt jealousy or anger in her life. She doesn't know those emotions", to which I snapped back, "Notify the Vatican; we have a new saint"), and there's no love lost between the woman and me.

Last week I noticed, while writing all the art classes I'd signed the children and myself up for on the calendar, that the MIL was coming soon for a full week. I counted the days on the calendar to make sure. Years ago, during a prior bout of couple's counseling, we reached a marital treaty on the MIL's visits, where we agreed that a long weekend four times a year would displease both of us equally and was therefore acceptable. The Sober Husband had told me a week or two ago that he had invited his mother out for five days "to make it up to her" that we weren't going away together leaving her alone with the children (neither Iris Uber Alles nor I had turned out to be ready for that). Five did not sound like fun to me, but seven? I was instantly furious.

When I finally brought it up to my husband, he claimed it was only six days (it's seven days and six nights) and that it was a mistake, he thought it was five days. I worked at letting it go and didn't say anything more. A few days later, on Thursday, it was time for couple's counseling, and I raised this as an example of how we've been getting along well lately. How ironic that was, as within seconds the Sober Husband was in a rage and I was in tears.

Our counselor asked me for examples of problems I have with the MIL, in order to understand this dynamic, and I gave two examples off the top of my head: (1) after meeting me for the first time, the MIL then met my parents... and told them that she thought I was having a severe mental breakdown; (2) she used to lie on the floor in my kitchen while I was cooking, and this behavior escalated until once she was lying prone on the floor right in front of my stove. This lying-on-the-floor behavior was famous among my friends, and I was asked to act it out more than once. The counselor was taken by these examples and asked the Sober Husband for his feedback. After expressing the general sentiment that his mother is a perfect guest, a sheer joy, he went on after some time to say that actually, come to think of it, for most of our relationship I was having a severe mental breakdown and could have benefited from commitment to a mental hospital. Oh, and it wasn't true that his mother had ever lain on the floor. I was prone to exaggerating and misunderstanding things and inventing things and believing things that weren't true.

On top of that, when the counselor drew him out about his feelings of me coming between him and his mother, the Sober Husband said with considerable emotion, "Carole comes between me and my work, me and my friends, me and my family, me and the children, me and EVERYTHING." I cried. The therapist made a bravura effort to get the Sober Husband to admit that although in his eyes, his mother might be flawless, she might be hard for me to get along with. No dice.

I left, shattered and unable to look at the man to whom I have had two children. He, weirdly, was smiling and chipper.

"One of us is going to a hotel," I said. "I need to be away from you." The Sober Husband, smiling, suggested that I go to a hotel, but when I informed him that he would then need to pick up the children between five and five thirty, his smile flagged. "Five?" he stammered. I gave him a withering glare as he jumped onto the subway.

After I got home, I informed him that I would pick up the children and he should NOT come home. Then, however, he said he was ready to leave work early to get the children, but I curtly told him not to. Feeling extremely distraught, I managed to safely drive across the town, gather up not only my own two darling hellspawn but one of Iris Uber Alles's best friends, drive them all home, cook a a nutritious but beloved dinner of broccoli pasta, coax Iris and her friend down from the fence, clean the kitchen, supervise Iris's homework, and turn Iris's friend over to her mother. Then we were all unwinding in the living room around 7:30, me with a glass of wine, when the Sober Husband arrived with a weird, fake smile on his face.

"What are you doing here?" I asked. He kept the fake smile on and suggested that he thought I was going to go to a hotel. I said that I'd made it clear that I wasn't, and he said that he'd needed to come home anyhow to get his stuff. The children, who hadn't had a clue before that anything was amiss, asked him what was wrong. Smiling, he said, "Mommy got mad at me during couple's counseling and wants me to go to a hotel."

I felt white hot rage. "How dare you make me the bad guy? He said I was crazy and that I make things up!" I glared at him again. "I was going to tell them you were working late!" Lola cried; Iris looked stressed. I whisked them upstairs, fetched their favorite stuffed animals, started a video, and made them chocolate milks, hissing at my husband on the stairs, "Thanks for being an asshole."

The children calmed down and went to bed a bit troubled but all right. I stayed snuggled up to Lola until she fell asleep. In the morning, I got us all up and out to school early, everyone seeming fine. I spent most of the day at the school, since it was my day to supervise the kindergarteners and first graders at lunch and recess. When it was time to pick up Lola, I recoiled: she was carrying Clover.

Clover is a massive stuffed giraffe who takes turns spending the weekends with the different kindergarteners, whose parents are supposed to record his adventures in a scrapbook. This feels like a contest amongst the parents to show who has the best, most wholesome and fabulous weekends, and here I was, having thrown out my husband. I quailed. I don't even know how to get the pictures off our new digital camera. I cravenly told Lola she should call her daddy and ask him to come help her with pictures of Clover.