On Thin Ice
This happened four years ago, and my blood still boils at the thought of it. My mother-in-law believes I took her little boy away from her. I just can’t win with her. Nothing is good enough. I’ve come to terms with that. Even moving in next door didn’t solve the “taking her son” issue, but that’s another story. My husband does shift work, 14-hour days.
During our wedding planning, he was doing this seven days in a row, two days off, then another seven days. He asked me to plan everything. We wanted to elope, but family insisted we have a real wedding. So, I planned everything. Literally everything. Because my future husband asked me to. We wanted super non-traditional, and I nailed it.
I did it on budget. On point. It was the best we could do with being forced to have a big wedding. No church. So I found a great local lady to marry us. General ceremony type. We put in as many hidden inside jokes into the ceremony as we could, related to our history and interests. Geeky jokes that would fly just under the radar unless you knew us.
But, the most meaningful part was our sand ceremony. My husband and I still have Lego from our childhood. So we went and dug out pieces and colors to use instead of a sand ceremony. It was my favorite part. Literally mixing the Legos to never be separated. One bucket, one life. This went on without a hitch. I poured. He poured. It was adorable.
I laughed at the pieces he picked. He asked me: Did you put a shark in there too?! Of course I did. We came back from photos a few hours later. That’s when I noticed something that made my blood boil. I noticed kids playing with a pile of Legos at a table. Our Legos. From our sand ceremony. I go looking for the box of ceremony items and it is gone.
Everything is gone. I asked the kids where they got it (They were young) and they said a nice lady was giving away free Lego! My blood was so hot. I asked my Maid of Honor for help and she lost her mind too. We tried to find all the pieces, but you know how kids are. The important, meaningful pieces were gone. The figurines, the shark, the cool special pieces.
When we finally confronted my mother-in-law, she told me how selfish it was to have Lego at the wedding and not let kids play with it. That I’m too old for Lego. That it wasn’t a real sand ceremony and I ruined the wedding once again. She was convinced she did nothing wrong. We made an announcement eventually and traded the kids money for any Legos they found.
We got back even more, only missing a few. It was enough to fill back the special boxes I had made for it. Except… no childhood shark (my special piece). No childhood figurine (his special piece). Ever since then, my mother-in-law and I are barely on speaking terms. It took a good year, I think, to use more than a few words with her at any given time.
She did finally realize what she did, however, after a later fight. She had again insisted I had ruined HER son’s wedding by getting upset about “silly items with no meaning”. I knew just what to do. I took her wedding album and told her I threw it out. It’s just a silly book with pictures, after all. Eventually…and I mean EVENTUALLY…she did apologize for everything she did at our wedding.
This included other things like telling everyone I’m just a good-for-nothing gold digger. I did eventually give back her wedding album. We are still on very thin ice. However, boundaries are much more respected after a few other item-taking situations. You do what you have to do when negotiating with crazy people, I suppose. You DO have to get on their level sometimes.