Being an In-law

        Being married, I see now, brings with it certain obligations. I am now an in-law. When Thanksgiving plans turned out to be four days with Mike's two daughters and their families—a husband and two children each, plus the daughters' mother (Mike's ex, as one might say)—on Tenmile Lake, up the Oregon coast, I left my little house on the mountain and its eight inches of new snow (!) to spend the holiday as an in-law.
        In the Coogle family my three brothers-in-law and one sister-in-law were known as "out-laws." I thought it was an apt term because we were a tight-knit family, with shared in-jokes and a boisterous way of being together that bespoke decades of knowing how to relate to each other. Now, finding myself suddenly inside another such family, I could sympathize with being an "out-law."
        There was, for instance, a lot of family talk at the house on the lake: reminiscences of the girls' growing up on the commune in the Applegate, talk about what their classmates were doing now, memories of vacations together. There were the family jokes: teasing Dad (that would be Mike) for not liking mashed potatoes for Thanksgiving, good-natured ribbing between the sisters. I listened and observed and enjoyed the interactions from the outside. I was "in" the family "by law" and felt completely a part of the Thanksgiving holiday, but I was, like Bruce, Billy, Jack, and Linda, an outsider all the same.
         Of course, I could hardly realistically fulfill the role of mother-in-law (stepmother-in-law, really) to Mike's daughters, for instance. The term had no meaning in the reality of these two grown women, mothers of two children each, with their own mother fulfilling every role that a mother at that time should. Instead, I related to my new (step)daughters-in-law by admiring Zoey's imaginative activities with the children—the crafts she brought, the scavenger hunt she organized for our walk through the forest—and praising Allegra's excellent cooking and handling of the kitchen. For Thanksgiving dinner we had a delicious smoked ham, accompanied by all the Thanksgiving dishes (except cranberry sauce, which wouldn't go well with ham), as well as Russian vegetable pie, a family favorite. We would have had apple and pecan pies in addition to the banana, pumpkin, and chocolate pies except that the night before Thanksgiving mice helped themselves to those two pies, which had to be thrown away. In a twinkling Thanksgiving morning Allegra's and Zoey's mother had made a peach pie and Allegra had made a pumpkin cheesecake to take their places. Smoked salmon and cream cheese for hors d'oeuvres, home-reared lamb for another dinner, chocolate chip pancakes and coffee cake for breakfast—good things to eat kept rolling from the kitchen. Well-fed guests are happy guests. Allegra's guests smiled all weekend.
        I could also hardly manifest the role of stepgrandmother-in-law, new in the family as I was and no one special to Mike's four grandchildren, who ranged in age from four to eight. I was just another adult in the house, with no disciplining, game-playing, or book-reading privileges, although the children did give me good-night hugs before they went to bed. As with all children, I would have to earn their love and respect; I would have to prove to them my place in the family, what being G-Pop's wife meant to them, who I was and could be in relation to them.
         I did make inroads. They loved the black bottom (chocolate) banana cream pie I made for Thanksgiving dinner. Food is always a good way to make friends with a child, and I put checkmarks in the score box for that one.
        On the last day of the holiday I was sitting near the stove working a New York Times crossword puzzle on my computer. The kids were playing with their toys, rambunctiously, as usual, and underfoot, as always, since the house was very small with few places for escape. Then I realized that the oldest boy, Quincy, had left the children's games and was standing over my shoulder. He asked what I was doing. I explained how to work a crossword puzzle, and even though it was a pretty darn difficult puzzle, even for me, I started asking him for help with the clues. Then his cousin Morgan joined us, and as the three of us brainstormed words, Rosie, the four-year-old girl, just climbed into my lap and sat there while we talked about words. "What's another way to say, "'Good job'?" Someone suggested the Spanish words, but they didn't fit. "What were the Wonderland cake words?" "What do you learn in Boy Scouts?"
        It was a magical moment with the children. I kept them in that aura for as long as I could until the boys inevitably lost interest and wandered away and Rosie climbed out of my lap, and I was alone again. But for some long precious moments, grandmother-in-law was one of the world's sweetest roles.