Monster-in-law
I moved to Belgium for a guy – a Belgian, name Luc.
After a year and a half of enduring a long distance relationship, we decided that I would leave NYC and live with him in Brussels.
But before I agreed to move, Luc and I had an extremely long and poignant discussion in my regular booth in my regular (10+ years) all-night diner on my street corner. The goal was for us to clarify to the last detail what we could expect from each other and our relationship. From a career perspective, I made it abundantly clear that I did not want to be put into any type of traditional, European rumors-based role, like taking care of the domestic responsibilities alone. I further added that I never wanted to be asked: "What's for dinner?" and "Where are my blue socks?"; that my philosophy is about partnership, a collaboration created between self-reliant individuals.
He was tooooootallly fine with that.
Yeah (wry smile.)
So on Jan 2, 1999 we took a red eye (overnight flight) from JFK to Brussels. When we landed he announced with a less than apologetic tone: "We can’t go directly to ‘our' apartment. We must first drive to Antwerp and have lunch with my mother."
Wanna guess if I was pleased about this? Picture it: I just left New York, MANHATTAN, where my whole life: family, friends, and burgeoning PR success were left behiind for a man that I loved and wanted to be with; not to join someone else's family right off the bat (excuse the pun.) I had made this clear during our 4-hour diner discussion and he had agreed. It was a long journey and now I wanted only to go to 'our' place, and 'chillax'.
It was a rough flight, extra turbulence, and several, semi-sweet tears on my part, and no sleep. Halfway through the flight, while hovering over the Altantic, I was filled with sweaty-back panic. Call it a woman’s intuition but falling to my death inside of an inflamed Boeing suddenly didn’t seem to be such a terrible fate. Eventually, I calmed down and came to my senses: my life was about to open up to a new chapter in Europe within a loving and dedicated relationship, new languages, cultures, travel, ...
Does anyone want to guess if there is already tension between his mother and me? She’s a traditional European woman and her son had decided that instead of finding a nice Belgian girl, he had asked a woman, from NYC, to live with him. And to the distress of her already glycerine-laced heart, that eventually he would marry her and probably create half-Belgian children. My ‘saving grace’ was that she had lived in the States for less than a year in 1950’s while her husband did his surgeon's residency at Detroit General (or whereever.) She is a widow now and the memories of those early years with her doctor husband in the US rendered my existence in her life just slightly more acceptable.
When we arrived at his mother’s house in Antwerp, we were (somehow) "late." I have no clue how one can be late for lunch when it was not yet noon, but we were. She gave me a forced smile and the proper protocol of a kiss on each cheek. Then she turned to her son and asked him in French why I didn’t take off my ‘casket’ - my favorite, worn-in Yankees cap. I learned a long time ago that playing stupid has its advantages. She had no idea that I could understand French - I had been taking private (and secret) lessons for a year, even since Luc and I had gotten serious about our relationship.
We prepared for lunch. Luc sat at the large dining table and didn’t help one iota. I was suddenly his mother's handmaiden, repeatedly running to and fro, from the kitchen to the stately dining room with cutlery and dishes, glasses, cups, plates of food, coffee, and juice. "Madam Cruella of Antwerp" tried not to strain herself by handing off these items each time I returned to the kitchen, planning to say, “Well, is there anything else I can-“
When we finished with the meal Luc disappeared somewhere inside the enormous house. His mother then invited me to follow her upstairs to "show me something." I had an asinine idea that I would be presented with some rite of passage or gift. Maybe a family heirloom or some such traditional token to welcome me into the family. She led me into the master bedroom and there on the queen-sized bed were piles of neatly folded laundry. I noted them vaguely but they did not register as an important detail. I noticed a door beyond her bed leading into another room, so I presumed - no - ass-U-med that that was where we are headed.
"La Mama" stopped at her bed and sat on the edge of it, then motioned to the area beside her for me to be seated. She reached behind the piles and pulled out a bundle of unfolded socks which she placed onto her lap. In shock I crumbled onto the space next to her as if I had been shot with a tranquilizer dart. My sudden thud onto the bed overturned the piles of perfectly folded tee shirts. She grimaced at me briefly then recomposed herself enough to announce: “I am going to show you how 'mon petit' (a.k.a. Luc) likes his socks to be folded.”
Suddenly, time slipped into slow motion and the air bent around like a scene from The Matrix. I could hear the large clock in the hallway ticking at a freakishly high decibel as if I landed in a defunct Hitchcock flick. I could taste my heartbeat, and the sounds of my own respiration rivalled the volume of Darth Vader's. I could see that "Mommy Dearest" was talking to me, but her voice sounded like a echoey combination of James Earl Jones and the adults in the Charles Schulz's animation PEANUTS.
I gazed blankly from within my stunned state. She began to demonstrate how the toes and heels need to be stretched into their proper shape so that the pair of socks can be fitted against each other uniformly. The next step is stretching them lengthwise (only) WHILE folding them – and not folded at the top or near the heel, but to make the fold a perfect equidistance between the two points.
"Whah thuh fuhh- WHERE is the television camera?" I nearly gasped.
I had been in my new country for less than 24 hours - less than 8 even - and already the role imposing crap had begun. I hadn’t figured that the women (there are two older daughters) in Luc's life would do the imposing, and not necessarily him.
On the other hand, Luc's mother wanted to share the details of how her son likes things done. And so I got to thinking. Maybe she would like to be privied to this type of insider information about her son from my perspective; my personal experience. When she agreed that she would I asked her to stand up and to turn around so that her back is facing me. Then somewhat gentlely yet firmly I demonstrated how Luc likes to have my middle finger rammed up his ass while I choke him around the neck.
Then and there I knew the relationship wasn’t going to work out - not the one with Luc anyway. But his mother does my laundry every week now, and she’s become quite skilled at folding my g-strings just the way I like them.
After a year and a half of enduring a long distance relationship, we decided that I would leave NYC and live with him in Brussels.
But before I agreed to move, Luc and I had an extremely long and poignant discussion in my regular booth in my regular (10+ years) all-night diner on my street corner. The goal was for us to clarify to the last detail what we could expect from each other and our relationship. From a career perspective, I made it abundantly clear that I did not want to be put into any type of traditional, European rumors-based role, like taking care of the domestic responsibilities alone. I further added that I never wanted to be asked: "What's for dinner?" and "Where are my blue socks?"; that my philosophy is about partnership, a collaboration created between self-reliant individuals.
He was tooooootallly fine with that.
Yeah (wry smile.)
So on Jan 2, 1999 we took a red eye (overnight flight) from JFK to Brussels. When we landed he announced with a less than apologetic tone: "We can’t go directly to ‘our' apartment. We must first drive to Antwerp and have lunch with my mother."
Wanna guess if I was pleased about this? Picture it: I just left New York, MANHATTAN, where my whole life: family, friends, and burgeoning PR success were left behiind for a man that I loved and wanted to be with; not to join someone else's family right off the bat (excuse the pun.) I had made this clear during our 4-hour diner discussion and he had agreed. It was a long journey and now I wanted only to go to 'our' place, and 'chillax'.
It was a rough flight, extra turbulence, and several, semi-sweet tears on my part, and no sleep. Halfway through the flight, while hovering over the Altantic, I was filled with sweaty-back panic. Call it a woman’s intuition but falling to my death inside of an inflamed Boeing suddenly didn’t seem to be such a terrible fate. Eventually, I calmed down and came to my senses: my life was about to open up to a new chapter in Europe within a loving and dedicated relationship, new languages, cultures, travel, ...
Does anyone want to guess if there is already tension between his mother and me? She’s a traditional European woman and her son had decided that instead of finding a nice Belgian girl, he had asked a woman, from NYC, to live with him. And to the distress of her already glycerine-laced heart, that eventually he would marry her and probably create half-Belgian children. My ‘saving grace’ was that she had lived in the States for less than a year in 1950’s while her husband did his surgeon's residency at Detroit General (or whereever.) She is a widow now and the memories of those early years with her doctor husband in the US rendered my existence in her life just slightly more acceptable.
When we arrived at his mother’s house in Antwerp, we were (somehow) "late." I have no clue how one can be late for lunch when it was not yet noon, but we were. She gave me a forced smile and the proper protocol of a kiss on each cheek. Then she turned to her son and asked him in French why I didn’t take off my ‘casket’ - my favorite, worn-in Yankees cap. I learned a long time ago that playing stupid has its advantages. She had no idea that I could understand French - I had been taking private (and secret) lessons for a year, even since Luc and I had gotten serious about our relationship.
We prepared for lunch. Luc sat at the large dining table and didn’t help one iota. I was suddenly his mother's handmaiden, repeatedly running to and fro, from the kitchen to the stately dining room with cutlery and dishes, glasses, cups, plates of food, coffee, and juice. "Madam Cruella of Antwerp" tried not to strain herself by handing off these items each time I returned to the kitchen, planning to say, “Well, is there anything else I can-“
When we finished with the meal Luc disappeared somewhere inside the enormous house. His mother then invited me to follow her upstairs to "show me something." I had an asinine idea that I would be presented with some rite of passage or gift. Maybe a family heirloom or some such traditional token to welcome me into the family. She led me into the master bedroom and there on the queen-sized bed were piles of neatly folded laundry. I noted them vaguely but they did not register as an important detail. I noticed a door beyond her bed leading into another room, so I presumed - no - ass-U-med that that was where we are headed.
"La Mama" stopped at her bed and sat on the edge of it, then motioned to the area beside her for me to be seated. She reached behind the piles and pulled out a bundle of unfolded socks which she placed onto her lap. In shock I crumbled onto the space next to her as if I had been shot with a tranquilizer dart. My sudden thud onto the bed overturned the piles of perfectly folded tee shirts. She grimaced at me briefly then recomposed herself enough to announce: “I am going to show you how 'mon petit' (a.k.a. Luc) likes his socks to be folded.”
Suddenly, time slipped into slow motion and the air bent around like a scene from The Matrix. I could hear the large clock in the hallway ticking at a freakishly high decibel as if I landed in a defunct Hitchcock flick. I could taste my heartbeat, and the sounds of my own respiration rivalled the volume of Darth Vader's. I could see that "Mommy Dearest" was talking to me, but her voice sounded like a echoey combination of James Earl Jones and the adults in the Charles Schulz's animation PEANUTS.
I gazed blankly from within my stunned state. She began to demonstrate how the toes and heels need to be stretched into their proper shape so that the pair of socks can be fitted against each other uniformly. The next step is stretching them lengthwise (only) WHILE folding them – and not folded at the top or near the heel, but to make the fold a perfect equidistance between the two points.
"Whah thuh fuhh- WHERE is the television camera?" I nearly gasped.
I had been in my new country for less than 24 hours - less than 8 even - and already the role imposing crap had begun. I hadn’t figured that the women (there are two older daughters) in Luc's life would do the imposing, and not necessarily him.
On the other hand, Luc's mother wanted to share the details of how her son likes things done. And so I got to thinking. Maybe she would like to be privied to this type of insider information about her son from my perspective; my personal experience. When she agreed that she would I asked her to stand up and to turn around so that her back is facing me. Then somewhat gentlely yet firmly I demonstrated how Luc likes to have my middle finger rammed up his ass while I choke him around the neck.
Then and there I knew the relationship wasn’t going to work out - not the one with Luc anyway. But his mother does my laundry every week now, and she’s become quite skilled at folding my g-strings just the way I like them.
This entry was posted
on 29 September 2005 at 11:38:00 AM.
