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Feb. 24, 2006
On conquering marital strife
True confessions and life lessons from the mother of the bride.
SHARON MELNICER
I've looked forward to my daughter's wedding day since she hit
puberty. I'm thrilled. What mother wouldn't be? The prospect of
a grandchild, the son I've never had, who can drive and has a regular
paycheque, is an enormous rush.
What's hard is being the mother of the bride. Menopause was easier.
Nobody told me about the mood swings, the anxiety attacks and the
tearful breakdowns. And I'm not talking about me. I haven't seen
this kind of adolescent behavior in my daughter since ... well,
her adolescence. I'm stuck in a pre-marital twilight zone. Agree
with her and I'm disinterested and can't express an opinion of my
own. Disagree and I'm indifferent to her wishes, unable to answer
the jackpot question, "Whose wedding is this anyway?"
I'm ready to reach for a Zoloft the minute I hear her voice on the
phone.
It started with the wedding show. My beaming daughter asked me to
go with her. The request was tantamount to getting all my teeth
pulled without freezing. As usual, my tongue started operating five
minutes before my brain kicked in. The response fairly hurled out
of my mouth. You're probably wondering exactly what I said. "Kill
me now" is what I said. Honest. "Kill me now."
The rest is a blur. I know there was a shocked silence, followed
by an ineffectual apology (me), followed by a storm of tears (her).
As the door slammed, the promise (read "threat") to invite
"her real mother, the one who loves me" was her departing
remark. By "real mother," she means her fiancé's
mother, who is the most sensitive of women, truly putting me to
shame in the all things bridal department.
It went downhill from there. It was only November. We were talking
about flowers one day. My daughter had some ideas about the color.
What did I think would be better: rose or plum? I provided what
I thought was a helpful answer. "Pink is pink," I said.
"They're all nice." Wrong answer. The sequence of events
went like before, except for the tears. She actually phoned her
mother-in-law-to-be from my kitchen this time. They met at the florist's
two days later and went with rose‚ because it was "more
delicate and subtle" (unlike me).
Yesterday, my little bride came over to try on her wedding dress.
In fact, it was purchased last August, but rather than take it to
her place, where her fiancé might stumble upon it, she asked
me to store it here. So here it has hung, in its cellophane cocoon,
for the past seven months. Excitedly, we unwrapped the filmy, beaded
confection; we had both forgotten how fragile it was. She stepped
into it carefully. With a silky rustle, she pulled it on. I stood
slightly behind her, gazing at her reflection in the mirror.
"Zip me up, Mom?" she chirped. And as I did, I noticed
some tiny puckering. The dress had dropped smoothly before.
"You probably don't want to gain any weight before the wedding,"
I insanely observed aloud. "You don't have a whole lot of wriggle-room."
"What are you saying, Mom?" She seemed to need clarification.
What's hard to explain is why I needed to provide it.
"Just that you don't want the zipper to pull or wrinkle at
the hips," I explained. My breathing grew shallow. The fight-or-flee
response had never been so intense. I knew I was in big trouble
now.
"Are you telling me that I've put weight on? That I have a
big ass?"
I put my head in my hands. I began moaning. Despite my monumental
effort to be diplomatic, I had done it again.
"No, of course not...." I drifted off into a lame stammer.
The ominous silence hung there between us like a waterlogged sweater.
I knew that of all the faux-pas I had made during this eternity
of a pre-nuptial period, and despite the thousands of emotional
minefields dug by my little bride-to-be thus far, this one was going
to be the rocket that blew me to smithereens. I was doomed. My relationship
with my daughter was over, finished, thanks to my terminal foot-in-mouth
disease. I'd be locked out of the wedding and I'd never see my grandchildren.
I reached for the Scotch. Meanwhile, the silence had become sniffling
mixed with several estimates, all of them vastly overstated, about
the humungous size of my rear end. My daughter then exited noisily,
her wisp of a wedding dress a rumpled heap on the floor. I poured
myself another. It could have been the booze talking, but maybe
this little rift was the time-out we clearly needed. And if it took
a few underhanded shots at each other's behinds to take some pressure
off, well, OK.
Wedding Day arrived. A few hours before the ceremony, my excited
daughter arrived at the house to dress. Careful with each other,
we exchanged civilities, determined to say nothing inflammatory.
The Scotch was nearby. As my angelic girl-child stretched her arms
heavenward to receive her milky froth of a dress, it glided like
Teflon over her hips. The fit was perfect, not a wrinkle or fold
anywhere. I caught her eye. She must have seen the question there.
"Stress!" she said. "I lost a couple of pounds because
of stress!"
I nodded in agreement. "Yup. Absolutely. Stress will do that,
alright."
Smiling, I went downstairs to put the Scotch away.
Sharon Melnicer is a Jewish writer, artist and teacher
living in Winnipeg.
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